MOTORISTS in Wellington can now enjoy smoother journeys to and from the M5 motorway following the early completion of a major road improvement scheme for the junction 26 roundabout and Chelston link road.

The road reopened on Sunday morning after being closed since June for a mixture of reconstruction, resurfacing, and new drainage works.

The £5.7 million Somerset Council project was funded mostly by the Government but was three times postponed after the grant was made in 2020.

Thanks to overnight and weekend working, and the use of innovative techniques, the road was reopened about three weeks ahead of the original schedule.

Somerset executive Cllr Mike Rigby said: “We are really pleased this has opened ahead of schedule.

“We have used, with our contractor Heidelberg Materials, some really innovative methods of getting this done.

“We effectively crushed up the concrete in situ on site and then used that as part of the base for the new road.

“The carriageway was 51 years old and well beyond its sell-by date, if you ever drove under junction 26, you would have seen half the kerbstones on the roundabout underneath the motorway missing.

“We have fixed all of that, we have fixed the broken drains, and we have come in on budget and a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.”

The road was closed during the school summer holidays to ensure the work could be finished without impacting National Highways, which has a depot off the roundabout for winter gritting.

Cllr Rigby said: “This scheme does not really unlock new investment in the area, but what it does mean is that you have a much smoother surface on which to drive.

“There was a lot of concern at the outset when the project started that this would be incredibly disruptive, and it is bound to have added quite considerable time to some people’s journeys.

“But in terms of the number of complaints I have received, it has operated pretty well.

“It has done a good job and the traffic management associated with it has been top notch.”

The Chelston link road is expected to handle significantly more traffic in the coming years as new housing developments come forward in and around Wellington and the town’s new railway station is delivered.

Cllr Rigby said: “This helps to link up the motorway with the railway station, which we are hoping to get up and running in the next year or so.

“Wellington has been the biggest town on the Great Western Railway network between Penzance and London Paddington not to have a railway station, and that historical error is about to be put right.

“There is no real extra capacity delivered by this project, but having this high-quality link between the new railway station and the wider local area via junction 26 clearly is an improvement.”

Cllr Rigby said the council could take lessons for other projects from the speed at which the junction 26 and Chelston scheme had been delivered.