A47 Harfrey's roundabout, Great Yarmouth junction improvements

We’ve made improvements to Harfrey's roundabout in Great Yarmouth town to reduce congestion and improve safety in the area.

Start date 27 March 2023

End date 7 December 2023

Cost Over £4m

Latest updates

01 February 2024

We've completed our work at Harfrey's roundabout

The £4m alterations to the A47 at Harfrey’s roundabout in Great Yarmouth have been formally opened at a ceremony attended by local MP, Sir Brandon Lewis on 1 February 2024.

Work on the roundabout was completed in late 2023. The altered roundabout is now connected via the new Herring Bridge to the port and the enterprise zone on the other side of the River Yare. Together with the new bridge, it now forms part of the new principal access route from the south into the town.

Matt Stafford, National Highways’ Regional Director for Major Projects in the East, said:

“This is a great day for Great Yarmouth and is an example of what can be achieved when people come together and work collaboratively.

“To minimise disruption, we partnered with Norfolk County Council and redeveloped Harfrey’s roundabout at the same time as the construction of the new bridge. This streamlined the process and made sense all round.

“The roundabout and the bridge significantly improve access to the seafront and the port. This is great news for both the local and regionally economy and forms part of over half a billion pounds of road improvements National Highways plans to deliver to the A47 between Peterborough and Great Yarmouth.”

Our director Matt Stafford meets with Sir Brandon Lewis MP to formally open the new roundabout

The altered roundabout and new bridge will ease traffic congestion on the town’s roads, shorten journey times and help make journey times more reliable, as well as supporting wider plans and work to maximise investment, regeneration and economic growth opportunities in the town and wider borough.

The new bridge became operational for river users in November 2023, and Norfolk County Council officially opened the to road traffic on 1 February 2024. Visit the Herring Bridge (Third River Crossing) website for more details.
17 July 2023

Road closures from 17 to 24 July 2023

Harfrey's roundabout on the A47 in Great Yarmouth will be closed overnight between 8pm and 6am between Monday 17 July to Friday 21st July inclusive, and then again on Monday 24 July 2023.

The road will be closed from Gapton Roundabout to Victoria Roundabout on the A47 itself, and between Harfrey’s Roundabout and Beccles Road on William Adams Way.

A signed diversion route will be in operation.

This closure will allow essential resurfacing work to be carried out. Thank you for your patience.

Third river crossing construction update

While their eastern approach is now largely complete, Norfolk County Council is doing further work on the western side to complete the new roundabout and connect the existing road to the new crossing, ahead of the bridge being fully open later this year.

Read more information on Norfolk County Council's Third river crossing construction.
27 February 2023
Work starts at Harfrey’s roundabout, March 2023

Norfolk County Council’s Third River Crossing project will link the A47 at Harfrey’s industrial estate in Great Yarmouth to the port and the enterprise zone via South Denes Road on the other side of the river.

We have therefore agreed that it makes sense for the council to also make the changes to the Harfrey’s roundabout on our behalf, whilst the bridge is being constructed. This will help to minimise any further disruption to the travelling public.

Work on the roundabout started on 27 March 2023. We're making the following changes to Harfrey's roundabout:
- Changes to William Adams Way east of the roundabout to connect to the Third River Crossing
- New signal-controlled pedestrian and cycle crossing points on William Adams Way as well as on the A47 south exit
- Changes to the kerb for HGVs turning left onto the A47 southbound
- Repainting road markings to create three lanes for traffic coming from the north.
To do this work, there will need to be some road closures at key stages, for the safety of the workers and the public.

The council aims to have both the roundabout upgraded, together with the bridge operational and open to traffic, during 2023. Watch the video for the new bridge and Harfrey's roundabout.

See more updates

Project information

The A47 route is the only east to west road link in north East Anglia.  It is the main road link between the East Midlands region, Peterborough, Wisbech, King’s Lynn, Norwich and Great Yarmouth.

The Great Yarmouth's third river crossing, Herring Bridge, now links the A47 at Harfrey’s roundabout to the port and was constructed by Norfolk County Council. The bridge will help reduce congestion and improve access to the A47. However, increased traffic in the future is still likely to constrain long-term economic growth in Great Yarmouth.

Traffic studies show that improving A47 Great Yarmouth junctions at the Vauxhall roundabout and the Harfrey’s roundabout would make journeys quicker, safer and more reliable, allow for increased future traffic and help grow the local economy.

You can read about the changes that will be made to both roundabouts in our leaflet.

The Vauxhall roundabout is the principal access into the town from the west via the Acle Straight. Read more about the changes we're proposing to Vauxhall roundabout in Great Yarmouth.

Following the preferred route announcement in August 2017, the original proposals were reviewed in light of the town’s third river crossing, which was awarded government funding shortly after our original proposals were announced.

The modelling completed for the third river crossing project showed notable changes in the way traffic accessed Great Yarmouth town and port areas.

The Department for Transport agreed that we should pause work on our original proposed designs to undertake further traffic modelling and assessment.

We then worked collaboratively with Norfolk County Council to review the changes in traffic flows and the impact on traffic using the A47 and its junctions.

Originally, we proposed to improve the Vauxhall and Gapton roundabouts. However, updated traffic modelling showed that these changes would no longer bring the intended benefits to the future road network, once the third river crossing was complete. So we decided to look to improve the Vauxhall and Harfrey’s roundabouts instead.

Now that the third river crossing is operational, Harfrey’s roundabout has become the principal access into the town from the south. As a result, we are no longer looking to change the Gapton roundabout, due to the improvements to the Harfrey's roundabout.

We are still developing proposals for improvements to the Vauxhall roundabout, but improvements to the junction with Station Road have been removed from the design as this work has already been completed by Norfolk County Council.

In summer 2022, we did important surveys in the areas around the Vauxhall and Harfrey’s roundabouts. These included ecology, noise and landscape surveys that will help us to refine our design and ensure we reduce our impact on the surrounding environment. We also carried out ground investigations at the Vauxhall roundabout.

During 2023, we've continued with our surveys at Vauxhall roundabout, including surveys of the existing carriageway and embankments to help guide our design. The investigations give engineers a clearer picture of the type of soils, rock and groundwater beneath the area of the roundabout, but this is not the start of any construction work.

The stretch of the A47 around Great Yarmouth experiences heavy congestion during peak times. The proposed schemes will increase capacity of the existing junctions to relieve congestion, reduce journey times, encourage economic growth and improve journeys.

This project aims to:

improve safety and reduce collisions
reduce delays and make journey times more reliable
increase the ability of the junctions to cope with incidents such as collisions and breakdowns, or during road maintenance and extreme weather
approve amenities for cyclists and pedestrians.

Because we’d updated our proposals for the A47 Great Yarmouth Junctions Improvements, we asked you to share your thoughts, concerns, ideas or local knowledge.

The scheme update period for the A47 Great Yarmouth Junctions Improvements reached its conclusion on Monday 10 January 2022, after running for six weeks. During this period, we shared our updated designs for the Harfrey’s and Vauxhall roundabouts and invited feedback from the public and stakeholders. There was a leaflet which provided more detail about the latest design. We also held three in-person events and hosted a virtual exhibition room. All feedback received during the period was formally reviewed by the project team.

You can read more about the past consultations for this scheme, including the A47 Great Yarmouth junction improvements consultation held from 13 March 2017 to 21 April 2017.