Hampshire County Council has appointed Milestone Infrastructure, a part of M Group Services’ Transport Division, as their contractor for delivering the planned Botley Bypass

The Botley Bypass is a significant and complex highways infrastructure project which will not only provide the necessary capacity to cope with additional traffic from nearby new developments, it will also deliver transport benefits for the wider community by reducing congestion, noise and pollution through the village of Botley.

Councillor Edward Heron, Executive Lead Member for Transport and Environment Strategy, said: “It’s good to see this scheme, which I know has long-standing local support, is progressing as planned and I welcome the news that a contractor has been appointed. 

“Working, in partnership with our in-house designers, Milestone Infrastructure Limited will bring their extensive civil engineering experience to the design phase so that we can ensure the construction programme is implemented as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.”

Mark Shopland, Operations Director at Milestone Infrastructure, said: “We are delighted to secure this opportunity to work with Hampshire County Council on this prestigious and important project.

“Our established, collaborative relationship with the County Council will enable us to bring together the combined skills of our organisations as an integrated team. We will maximise the benefits of our early involvement during the finalisation of the design and develop a delivery solution that meets the various constraints of the project.”

The completed Bypass will measure 1.8 kilometres in length and 7.3 metres wide and will connect to the B3354 Winchester Street in Botley, Hampshire to the west and the junction of A334/A3051 to the east and it will have a 40mph speed limit. A three-metre wide shared use footway/cycleway will be built along the southern side. 

It is expected that work on this third phase will begin in summer 2023 and that the Bypass will be completed by the end of 2025.