The government has announced that plans can move forward to allow traffic to join and exit the M5 in both directions at junction 10.

Gloucestershire County Council, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Borough Councils together with GFirst LEP have worked in partnership towards achieving an ‘all ways’ M5 Junction 10 to support the delivery of the housing and employment growth set out in the Joint Core Strategy (JCS).

Junction 10 is currently one of the few junctions on the M5 with restricted access and resolving this is a top priority within the county council’s adopted local transport plan and is a key element of the JCS’s infrastructure delivery plan.

At the moment, the junction has no access to join the motorway to travel south, and there is no exit for motorway traffic coming from the south. This means that traffic wishing to access the north west of Cheltenham has to use more local roads which causes congestion.

A new layout would see environmental benefits from less traffic travelling through Cheltenham and businesses would see savings in their transport costs as they would no longer need to travel to or from junction 11.

Emergency services would also be able to respond more easily to incidents on the M5 in the vicinity of the junction.

The ‘all ways’ improvement will also provide the transport infrastructure to support the phased delivery of west and north west Cheltenham’s strategic development sites with up to 70 hectares of employment land, incorporating the internationally important cyber park, and 5,600 homes.

The Chamber believes that making junction 10 four-way is crucial for the future of Cheltenham both for the West of the town and for improving access to the town centre itself.

We will continue to campaign for this major project to come to fruition as soon as possible.