Decades-long dualling campaign for congested A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham not dead, leaders insist

North East mayor Kim McGuinness and North Northumberland MP David Smith told business leaders on Wednesday evening that they still believe the heavily-debated upgrade of the congested route can be revived.

That is despite the Labour Government deeming the project “unfunded and unaffordable” last year and moving this month to revoke the development consent order that would have allowed it to proceed.

A campaign to dual 13 miles of single carriageway on the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham has been going on for decades, amid long-standing complaints that it can suffer from severe traffic queues and is a blackspot for accidents.

Speaking at a Q&A session with members of the Alnwick Business Forum, Ms McGuinness said she was “deeply frustrated” by the situation.

While the mayor cannot use her devolved transport funds to pay for the A1 dualling works, because the route is owned by National Highways, she added: “You can’t take dualling off the table. It is an option in the long-term.”

Ms McGuinness told the audience at pharmaceutical company Arcinova’s Alnwick headquarters: “I have sat on that motorway on my way home in the traffic, in the summer when everyone is trying to get to the coast and thought ‘how is that the main road to Scotland?’

“I’m with you and we will keep it firmly on the agenda, while demanding urgent changes that improve safety for the road.”

The Department for Transport (DfT) has this week published a new Draft Road Investment Strategy which sets out priorities for the road network across England from 2026 to 2031, which says that improving safety is “the Government’s and National Highways’ first priority”.

Mr Smith told Wednesday evening’s meeting that he wanted to see the A1 in Northumberland given “tens of millions of pounds” when a detailed investment strategy is published by next March.

He said that short-term fixes are needed to improve safety at problem junctions, including at Felton and Morpeth, but that dualling must remain the goal.

The MP added: “The road has to change. This is a generational issue, this is decades and decades in the making. Dualling is not off the table.

“I was very careful in the general election not to promise that I would be the MP who would dual the A1 – that is not to say I don’t want it to happen, I do.”

The DfT said earlier this month that it was “exploring solutions” for changes to the A1 that could improve safety and congestion, but had had to make “difficult decisions about a number of road projects as they were unfunded or unaffordable”.

A consent order for the dualling works was granted to National Highways in May 2024, with the Conservatives facing criticism at the time for not granting approval for the scheme until the days after the general election was called – having been in Downing Street for 14 years at that point.

Heidi Alexander, Labour’s transport secretary, has since said that the dualling was “poor value of money”, with its estimated cost having spiralled from £290 million in 2014 to more than half a billion pounds.