Highways Agency

The Project

The M25 is one of Europe's busiest motorways, handling around 200,000 vehicles every day. It is at the core of our network and is suffering from increasing congestion levels and journey times.

We need to manage traffic flows better and to help achieve this we plan to widen the carriageways from dual 3 lanes to dual 4 lanes. 

We will build the new lanes within land we already own.

This is one of five schemes for the improvement of the M25 that entered the Government's Programme of Major Schemes in April 2004.  We are developing design, programming and procurement arrangements.

What happens next?

On 15th November we published an Environmental Statement for these improvement works. The Environmental Statement describes the proposed improvement works, their main effects on the environment and the measures developed to reduce adverse environmental effects. Its purpose is to ensure that all those consulted, including the public, understand the proposals and are given an opportunity to comment on them.
 
We have presented information from this report on this website under Environmental Impact.  Alternatively you may prefer to read the Non-Technical Summary of the Environmental Statement, which can be found by visiting the Publications page.

The full Environmental Statement is too large to be placed on this website but is available to on CD request.

Any person wishing to express an opinion on the Environmental Statement had the opportunity to do so between 15 November 2007 and 7 February 2008. The comment period has now closed and all comments were presented in a report to the Secretary of State in March 2008. The Secretary of State will consider any opinions received, together with the Environmental Statement, before making a decision on whether or not the scheme should go forward to the construction stage.