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10
Jul
Kex Gill: Council moots early finish to £82.5 million road realignment
The £82.5 million Kex Gill road realignment could finish two weeks early — but the cost is likely to continue to rise.
North Yorkshire Council’s new transport chief Cllr Malcolm Taylor revealed the information in his first report since he succeeded Councillor Keane Duncan last month.
Cllr Taylor, the Conservative executive member for highways and transportation, gave an overview of transport issues ahead of next week’s full council meeting.
He said good weather in May and June had aided progress on the A59 at Kex Gill and the “opening date has now been brought forward two weeks to early June 2026”.
The council originally said the realignment would be completed by March this year.
But following delays and compensation claims, which caused the cost to increase by £13.7 million, the finishing date had most recently been given as ‘June 2026’. This has now been brought forward to ‘early June 2026’.
Further work decommissioning the old road is expected to last until March 2027 but this should not affect motorists.
Cllr Taylor’s report warns taxpayers could again have to bale out the scheme after the overall cost rose from £68.8 million to £82.5 million in May.
It says:
Extra project management expertise has been brought in to strengthen the council delivery team and several long running high value compensation events have been concluded, for which additional risk budget funding was approved at the executive meeting on 13 May, however, there remains a risk of future challenge towards the implemented value of these claims.
The Department for Transport awarded a fixed sum of £56.1 million towards the realignment of the landslip-prone route between Harrogate and Skipton. The council initially contributed £12.7 million but this has now risen to £26.4 million.
The Stray Ferret yesterday reported on Cllr Taylor’s comments regarding plans to introduce a new system to speed up roadworks by the end of the year. Click here to read more.
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