Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

The Project

Work on widening the A23 Trunk Road between Handcross and Warninglid, south of Crawley, in West Sussex started in October 2011. The improvements are broadly along the line of the existing A23 and in accordance with modified Orders and an Environmental Statement approved in March 2010.

Key features of the project are:

• Approximately 2.4 miles (3.8km) of dual three-lane carriageway to replace the existing dual two-lane carriageway  between Handcross and Warninglid junctions located generally within the existing highway boundary. There will be no main carriageway lighting or laybys.
• Closure of direct local residential and commercial accesses and provision of alternative access routes to improve safety.    
• Revised junctions at Handcross and Warninglid including rebuilding the weighbridge site at Handcross.
• A two way service road from Warninglid to provide access to commercial and residential properties on the west side of the A23. 
• Footway/cycleway between Handcross and Warninglid with connections to the local footpath network between Slaugham and Warninglid. Equestrians will also be able to use the route between Slaugham and Warninglid. 
• Two lanes to be kept open in each direction with 40mph speed restrictions and average speed cameras during construction (further lane restrictions may be installed overnight for specific operations).
• Traffic Monitoring of local roads before, during and after construction to assess any affects of the closure of Slaugham junction on the local network.
• An estimated range forecast cost of £87 million to £103 million although efficiency savings are now being developed.

Recent Developments

Following the comprehensive spending review, the Secretary of State announced in October 2010, that the A23 scheme would be one of fourteen schemes in England to be prepared for start of construction by 2015. An optimised programme was then developed for the delivery of these schemes with the aim of securing efficiency savings. The programme for the fourteen schemes was announced in April 2011 when it was confirmed that work on A23 would start in the period between October and December 2011. Click here for further details of the optimised programme.

In early April 2011, we made a start on seasonally sensitive environmental advance work such as tree planting and the provision of wildlife boxes which put us in a position to start work on the main scheme in October. During October and November we removed the trees either side of the A23 and in the central reserve on Handcross Hill, and completed clearing other vegetation.

Further environmental mitigation work will continue throughout the winter of 2011/12 following which we will commence the main civil engineering works in the Spring/Summer of 2012. In the first phase of these works we will temporarily widen the southbound carriageway to carry two lanes of traffic in each direction which will enable us to move to the next stage of rebuilding the northbound carriageway. We will also construct the service road serving properties west of the A23 and other replacement access to local properties. Our main site compound will be established on the west side of the A23 north of Warninglid junction next year but meanwhile during the environmental works, an interim site office has been provided at the site of the former Poplar Nursery at Warninglid junction.