Northumberland’s A1 Dual Carriageway Upgrade Gets Planning Approval

Road travel in our region is set to get a little better over the next few years, as a long-awaited upgrade to the A1 in Northumberland has finally been approved.

Currently, the A1 and A1(M) runs for approximately 150 miles through our region as a continuous dual-carriageway, reverting to a single carriageway road near Morpeth. It’s periodically dualled from there up to Edinburgh.

The idea to upgrade the road to a dual carriageway has been around for at least 40 years, with various proposals to do so coming and going from successive governments. However the current scheme, proposed in 2020, looks to have built up sufficient momentum to finally allow it to happen.

Following several delays in the decision-making process over the past couple of years the Secretary of State for Transport, Mark Harper MP, has green-lit the development. Funds previously allocated to the cancelled northern portions of the HS2 high-speed rail project have been made available, although £67m has already been spent on the plan to date.

The project will see two separate stretches of the A1 upgraded to dual carriageway, along with the construction of some new road sections, for a total of 13 miles of additional highway.

A lower, eight-mile length will run from the existing merge point near Morpeth up to the start of a dualled Alnwick bypass, with the additional five miles continuing on from that up to Ellingham. It will result in a further, continuous, 24-mile dualled section.

Additional access roads and infrastructure will also be part of the upgrade, with new bridges over the River Coquet near Felton and a road under the A1 at Burgham Park.

No dates have been given for the start or completion of construction yet, but should it get underway this autumn we’d expect the new road to open in late 2027 or early 2028, at a cost of approximately £250m.