Councillor Gary Sumner and the New Eastern Villages plans The new £30m new road being built to connect the houses in the New Eastern Villages expansion to the Commonhead roundabout and M4 will be built without any cost to the Swindon taxpayer. The government has confirmed today it will be paying £11.6m toward the project from Department for Transport funds and the Local Growth Funds. That goes with £19m from the Housing Infrastructure Fund announced in November 2019 by Homes England, covering the entire cost of the new 1.5-mile road running from South Marston to the roundabout. It will enable residents to bypass Swindon and the A419 when heading south.
THE news more than 1,300 Amazon jobs are set to be created in Swindon this year has been greeted with delight by councillors. The online giant will occupy the enormous new plant being built at Symmetry Park just off the A420 on the eastern edge of the town and announced yesterday it would be hiring 10,000 new staff across the UK. That includes at least 1,300 jobs at new fulfilment centres in Swindon, Gateshead and Dartford. The news also provided the first confirmation Amazon would be using the new 50,000 sq m warehouse which was bought for £200m by Legal & General Investment Management in October.
15 May 2021
multimillion-pound investment will help fund new road linking New Eastern Villages development with existing local road network
planned works include new roundabout, signalised junction and footway – all of which will ease congestion and improve local journey times
funding reiterates government commitment to levelling up transport infrastructure across the country as we build back better
Swindon will benefit from a multimillion-pound road scheme to provide fast journeys between the town and the planned New Eastern Villages development, Transport Minister Baroness Vere announced today (15 May 2021).
The project – supported by £11.6 million of funding from the Department for Transport (
DfT) and led by Swindon Borough Council – will include a new access road between the A419 Commonhead roundabout and the southern end of the new development, enabling the construction of 4,150 new homes.
CONSTRUCTION work on the new southern access road to Wichelstowe under the M4 will move to stage four next week. The narrowed lanes near Junction 16 will be restored back to their normal alignment and the lowered 50mph speed limit will be bumped back up to 70mph on Saturday. This traffic management system was in place while the north and south entrances to the underpass were constructed. Now that the entrances are complete, the excavation of the underpass and the construction of the new road itself are the next big steps in the process which began last year. Advanced engineering methods, including the construction of a specially-built embankment to redirect lanes of traffic, have ensured enough space is available on the motorway for work to continue and for drivers to continue using the M4.