THE 'biggest infrastructure project in Swindon for decades' will begin in the autumn.

Planned changes to the notorious White Hart Roundabout in Covingham will herald the first phase of a massive operation that will improve existing roads and create new ones ahead of house building for the New Eastern Villages.

That will see upwards of 8,000 homes go up in six different ‘villages’ on countryside to the east of the A419.

Gary Sumner, the council’s cabinet member for strategic planning, said: “This is unique in that we are putting in the infrastructure before the homes go in. This is by far the biggest infrastructure project in Swindon for decades and it will be the most transformative as well.”

The first change people will see will be work on the White Hart Roundabout junction.

Coun Sumner said: “It will have its capacity increased and will also be signalised, with a smart system. People are used to queuing at the roundabout waiting for traffic to let them on and that queue, at busy times, often backs up on the A419.

“That’s shouldn’t happen when the work is finished. The smart traffic management system should stop the long queues, and it should ease traffic heading to Gablecross and Oxford.

“The northern sliproad is also inadequate and badly designed. There will be an entirely new and better, safer sliproad constructed on unused land there.”

As part of the work, the entrance onto Ermin Street will be closed and a new priority junction built with Oxford Road, the main route to the town centre.

In January, work is due to start on the Gablecross junction. This will increase its capacity and add traffic lights in order to better handle an anticipated increase in traffic after the White Hart improvements.

Work will also begin on the southern connector road, a 1.5-mile single carriageway road which will link the new villages yet to be built with the Commonhead Roundabout and the M4.

Coun Sumner said: “This has been a tortuous process to get this ready. This will be a road for residents in the new housing who want to get to the A419 or the motorway.

"We’ve designed it as a single carriageway as that will be sufficient, but also because this is not a bypass. It’s not built to relieve traffic elsewhere, it’s to allow people to get to and from the new developments which are coming."

The whole highways improvement scheme will see the roundabout in Covingham near the Messenger pub and the junction of Oxford Road and Nythe Road improved.

In total the works are expected to cost £72.5m, with £47.6m of that coming from a central government grant which has to be spent by March 2021.

Coun Sumner said: “The government knows we can deliver these improvements – we did the Junction 16 upgrade and there was some inconvenience, but it’s now a much better junction and people get through it much faster.

The officer in charge of the project, Laura Jones, said: “We’ll be spending the money from the government first to make sure we use it. The rest of the money will come form developers contributions under section 106.

Motorists coming off the A419 and using the White Hart Roundabout now will see signs that work is about to start overnight very soon.

This is in fact routine maintenance, and nothing to do with the improvement process. When that work starts there will be off-peak work, and some disruption, but no complete closure.

Ms Jones said: “We’ll be looking at closing some lanes, between 9.30am and 3.30pm, and resurfacing will probably be done at night - there’ll be restrictions but no total closures.”