Work on a £400 million road improvement project on the A1 carriageway in North Yorkshire is now complete.

The A1 Leeming to Barton scheme has been handed over by Morgan Sindall to Highways England and officially opened by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling.

The project involves upgrading a 13-mile sector of road, widening it from a dual carriageway to a three-lane motorway.

Overall, the scheme also required 10 new bridges, four modified bridges and 11 miles of new local access roads to be built. In total, around 600,000 tonnes of road surface was used, 2.8 million cubic metres of earth was moved, and 18 miles of new hedgerows, 28 hectares of new woodland and 14 hectares of new wildflower grassland were planted.

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The A1(M) improvement scheme has been designed to boost economic growth by providing a safer, continuous motorway-standard route between London and Newcastle.

Morgan Sindall's Managing Director for Infrastructure, Simon Smith, said: "The whole A1 Dishforth to Barton scheme has been a real team effort, culminating in this official opening of the Leeming to Barton section."

Managing Director of Highways, Paul Gott, added: "I'm incredibly proud of the whole team for their sustained efforts and commitment to the end goal, delivering improvements that will benefit the travelling public for many years to come."

Highways England Senior Project Manager Tom Howard said: "This is great news for the almost 70,000 drivers who already use this section every day and whose journeys will be safer and faster.

"At the same time we've also made it easier for local people to access the A1 safely, and we've planted miles of hedgerows and acres of woodland.

"This has been the biggest road project in the north and I would like to thank everybody involved in the scheme for their hard work and commitment in making it happen."

(LM/MH)