Plans for A259 Bognor Regis to Littlehampton corridor approved for submission to Department for Transport

The go-ahead to submit the plans for the Bognor Regis to Littlehampton corridor was given by Joy Dennis, cabinet member for highways & transport.

If the business case is approved – a decision is expected in February – the £39m scheme is expected to include:

• New roundabouts with active travel and bus priority measures at the Comet Corner and Oystercatcher junctions;
• Additional active travel and bus priority measures at the Church Lane roundabout;
• New active travel measures at the Ferry Road junction;
• A new left turn lane and active travel measures on the Bridge Road approach to the Bridge Road roundabout;
• New active travel measures between Oystercatcher and Church Lane; and
• New speed limits along the A259 corridor between Flansham Lane and Bridge Road roundabouts.

Active travel simply means making journeys in physically active ways, such as walking, cycling or scooting.

The scheme, which has been through a number of public consultations, was identified as a priority by the council in its Strategic Transport Investment Programme in 2019/20 and was considered to be one of the top ten priority schemes in the south-east by Transport for the South-East.

The total estimated costs is £39.067m – £2.233m for the outline business case, £3.419m for a full business case (which should be submitted in February 2025), and £33.415m for construction.

It is anticipated that the Department for Transport will pay £30.588m towards the costs.

After other outside contributions, the council will be left with £5.152m to find, likely through borrowing.

The backbone of the outline business case is made up of five areas – the strategic, economic, financial, commercial and managements cases.

A report from Alex Sharkey, manager of highways projects, said: “The strategic case demonstrates that the A259 scheme will achieve its objectives by providing the highway and transport infrastructure needed to mitigate the impacts of planned strategic development of new homes and employment in the area.

“The benefits from the scheme include road safety improvement, improved journey time reliability and less congestion as well as better provisions of active and sustainable travel facilities.

“This in turn, will mean people have more options of how they travel to work and spend their money and so on, thus helping the local economy to thrive.

“The A259 scheme also has high local support for its delivery, with over 81 per cent of respondents to recent public consultation indicated their support for the scheme.”