Call to dual A1 reignited after six deaths

A council leader has said he will do "all he can" to ensure a section of the A1 is dualled after a sixth person died on it in a month.

Northumbria Police is investigating a crash involving a BMW and a Mercedes HGV near Causey Park which killed a woman in her 50s on Monday.

In May five people were killed on the road in nine days reigniting calls to upgrade the road to a dual carriageway.

Northumberland County Council leader Glen Sanderson said: "It's absolutely appalling that we still have this ridiculous road - something must be done."

Much of the A1 north of Morpeth is single carriageway, despite a decades-long campaign calling on Westminster to dual it.

An upgrade to 13 miles (21km) between Morpeth and Ellingham was planned by previous Conservative government for years, with millions spent on purchasing land needed to expand the road.

However, the cost spiralled to more than GBP500m and the current government scrapped the project in October 2023, calling it "unfunded and unaffordable".

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service[1], Sanderson said the council was "pulling together some officer time to start building a proper business case" to ask the government to reconsider.

"The road is simply not able to deal with the level of traffic," he said.

"Any major road change costs money, but in real terms this is not a huge amount of money to get this job back on the drawing board."

References

1. ^ Local Democracy Reporting Service (www.bbc.co.uk)