The M49 ghost junction debacle is finally set to be sorted after South Gloucestershire Council announced plans to buy the land by force. But it admits it does not know who owns one of the plots needed to build a 160-metre road that will connect the motorway roundabout to the local network.
A report to cabinet, which will authorise compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) on Friday, February 10, said that while officers will continue to negotiate sales and a CPO would be used only as a “last resort”, it is “highly unlikely” that the scheme can be finished without them. The report also names the landowners for the first time and reveals a hotchpotch of land parcels, verges, wasteland, drains and access rights – some as tiny as two square metres – that belong to different entities, two of which are companies registered in Jersey.
National Highways spent £40million to £50million building the M49 junction between Severn Beach and Chittering, which was completed in 2020. It should have provided easy access to the nearby Severnside industrial estates and huge distribution centres, including Amazon, Tesco and Lidl.
