 Road closure extended after heavy rain
Part of Easthampstead Road in Wokingham, between Waterloo Road and Heathlands Road, will now be shut until next Saturday (8 February) at the latest.
Our partners at Balfour Beatty are clearing hedges on both sides so they can get set up to build the South Wokingham Distributor Road.
It was set to reopen this Saturday but this has been delayed by heavy rain, which caused flooding in that area and slowed work down.
A diversion remains in place for vehicles, and there's still access on both sides of the railway, but only pedestrians can use the level crossing.
Businesses remain open and can be accessed as usual.
We considered alternatives, like returning in the half-term holidays, but this would have conflicted with scheduled works on London Road.
We're sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause, and hope you will appreciate that these circumstances are beyond our control.
We'll do our best to reopen the road before next Saturday, which may be possible as the weather forecast is more favourable.
Keep an eye on all disruption across the borough using our live map.
When Easthampstead Road reopens, you'll notice there's less vegetation on either side where the crews have created temporary entrances.
As part of this scheme, we'll more than make up for that by planting extra trees and hedges. We'll be taking a detailed look at our landscaping strategy in a future edition of this newsletter, so watch this space.
 Looking ahead to what's coming next
We're still working with Balfour Beatty to finalise our works programme and we'll share this with everyone as soon as we can.
Main works on the South Wokingham Distributor Road will begin in the spring, but no significant disruption is expected until later in the year.
From the summer onwards, we're expecting closures at the junction of Molly Millars Lane and Finchampstead Road, and we're also expecting further closures on the same section of Easthampstead Road from the winter.
We know this will be disruptive but we'll be working closely with residents and businesses closest to the planned works and will share the timetable with the wider community within the next few weeks.
This new road won't just serve new housing - there's lots of infrastructure planned for the area including a primary school, nature parks and more.
This will be funded by statutory contributions from developers. Stay tuned for an update on our wider vision for the future of South Wokingham.
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