Researched and written 17 October 2026. Sources are listed at the end.
A pinch point on a national route
The A46 is a strategic link between the East and West Midlands, tying Coventry and Warwickshire to the motorway network and forming part of what National Highways calls the Trans-Midlands Trade Corridor between the M5 and the Humber ports. Around Coventry it carries about 57,000 road users a day.
Walsgrave is the last at-grade roundabout on the road east of Coventry and north of Tollbar End, so every vehicle on the A46 has to slow down there. National Highways says the improvements already made at Tollbar End and on the M6 smart motorway have increased the pressure on it.
What will be built
Today a three-arm priority roundabout joins the A46 to the B4082. The approved design removes that roundabout and builds a grade-separated junction just to the north of it, so traffic staying on the A46 flows freely while local traffic keeps its connection to the B4082.
The Walsgrave scheme alone is costed at £112.5 million. Octavius Infrastructure is the main contractor. Average speed cameras, temporary site entrances and new safety barriers come first. The old overhead gantry is being taken down.
The timeline
The project began in 2016. A preferred route was announced in June 2022 and a statutory consultation ran from 25 October to 6 December 2023. National Highways submitted its Development Consent Order application on 14 November 2024 and the Planning Inspectorate accepted it on 12 December. The examination closed on 12 September 2025.
On 4 February 2026 Lord Hendy, acting for the Secretary of State for Transport, approved the order. Early works started on 13 July 2026, with main construction due from the autumn and the new junction expected to open to traffic in 2028.
Night closures to plan around
Most of the disruption happens overnight, between 8pm and 6am from Monday to Friday. The A46 southbound closes overnight from 19 to 30 October 2026. The B4082 closes overnight on 29 and 30 October. A 50mph limit applies through the works and the laybys between Walsgrave and junction 2 of the M6 have closed for use as site entrances before being removed for the new junction.
National Highways has changed its building method to cut the amount of noisy night work and sheet piling. Closures can change at short notice, so check its daily closures page before setting out late at night.
The first phase at Binley
Walsgrave is the second half of the A46 Coventry junctions programme. The first, at Binley, cost £61 million. Work started in 2020. Over two weekends in December 2021 a 750-tonne crane lifted 32 steel beams with a combined weight of 720 tonnes into place to form a flyover above the old roundabout. The flyover opened in July 2022, in time for the Commonwealth Games. Every slip road was open by November 2022.
Staying near the works
Walsgrave is about 2 miles by road from the nearest of our homes and Binley about a mile. University Hospital Coventry, on the same side of the city, is about 2 miles. Site teams on the scheme can take a whole house with free parking, invoiced to the company on a pro-forma with the PO reference.
Sources: nationalhighways.co.uk/roads-and-travel/road-projects/west-midlands/a46-coventry-junctions-upgrade; newcivilengineer.com/latest/nh-begins-preparatory-works-for-112m-upgrade-to-a46-junction-near-coventry-10-07-2026. Distances by road from each house, worked out on OpenStreetMap.
