Carlisle Southern Link Road progresses toward late 2025 opening

Cumberland Council’s Carlisle Southern Road Link (CSLR) project is one of the biggest council projects in the North of England, and currently the biggest project in the portfolio of Galliford Try, the engineering company hired to undertake the mammoth £212million mission to enhance connections between the south of the city to the M6, linking junction 42 of the motorway to Peter Lane.

The construction site sees 263 daily workers, several of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds including ex-prisoners, veterans, and care leavers, as well as some students and summer placement workers.

Ross Glendinning, operations director for major projects at Galliford Try, said the project is a ‘catalyst’ for Carlisle to build more homes.

He said the company is ‘very proud to be involved’ and there’s a supply chain throughout the project in terms of money being spent on local companies for parts and materials, meaning it's going back into the Cumbrian economy.

Construction site of the new road, July 24 2024 (Image: Cumberland Council)

Darren Crossley, director of place, sustainable growth and transport, said the progress makes him feel ‘optimistic’ about the development of St Cuthbert’s Garden Village, the delivery for which relies on the new link road.

He said: “Over the last six years now, while we've been developing our plans for the garden village, we certainly felt the benefit of government support to be able to develop those plans, and some of the challenges that come along as well.

“But as of the advent of a new government, we're in a position now where we recognise there are going to be demands on future housing.”

The government set a target of building 1.5million new homes across the UK to address a shortage of affordable housing.

He said St Cuthbert’s Garden Village has had access to infrastructure like schools, GPs, and green spaces from the start.

“We've been spending many months planning out what the infrastructure requirements would be and we're now beginning to get to the sharper end in terms of who pays for those, how will they be paid for in the future, what the services look like.

“That’s where we’ve still got quite a bit of creative work to do in terms of the viability of the Garden Village and how we make sure that we can deliver on all those things, but they’ll be in our plan that's coming together and that's what we're challenging housing developers and ourselves to a degree to deliver on,” Mr Crossley explained.

It’s over two decades from completion, roughly 25 years, with getting the infrastructure ready a ‘challenge’ for it.

The current scene of the CSLR is that of a path laid for the new road for which around 2000 trees have been removed, to be replaced at a date soon after the road is opened, along with hedgerows and grassland, he added.

Construction site of the new road, July 24 2024 (Image: Cumberland Council)

The work has seen the closure of Dalston Road, affecting access between Dalston and Carlisle, with some business owners in the village’s centre reporting a negative impact on trade as a result.

Some business owners said their trade dramatically decreased on the day of the closure, and others feared the long-term impact after the link road is complete and that it would forever quell passing traffic which provides ample custom.

Mr Crossley said consultations have been taking place over the last five years and the ‘scale and changes’ of the plan will ‘inevitably impact’ the area, but it is a ‘positive’ one.

“There may be other opportunities that we collectively can work on and generate across this patch that wouldn't have been there before, both in terms of employment sites for new growth and for new business.”

There may also be tourism opportunities for the area, he said.

“What I'd say to any of those businesses is we're open to ideas and thoughts as to how we can help and assist, we always are.”