Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to their recently published road investment strategy, when the work on the A303 will start; and how long it will take.

On 1^st December, the Government published the first Road Investment Strategy, setting out how we will invest £15 billion in over 100 schemes across the road network. It included a long-term commitment to invest over £2 billion in the A303/A30/A358 corridor and proposed to start this process with three major improvements; dualling the A303 between Amesbury and Berwick Down and between Sparkford and Ilchester, and providing a dual carriageway link from the M5 at Taunton to the A303. The Highways Agency will now start to develop the proposals but each will be subject to differing timescales depending on detailed design and progress through planning processes. Our aim is for construction of these proposals to start towards the end of this Road Period which runs from 2015/16 to 2019/20.