Warrington Roadworks This Week: Cantilever Bridge and M6

The first closure of the coming week is in town. The Cantilever Bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal closes to traffic and pedestrians from 7pm on Monday 5 October to 6am on Tuesday 6 October for an inspection. It is the first of four canal crossings to shut at night this month. The other three follow in October, one week each.

Also from Monday 5 October:

• six weeks of daytime surfacing closures start in Rixton and Woolston
• six weeks of Cadent gas main work start in Bruche and Padgate
• the Birchwood motorway slip roads start closing overnight from Wednesday 7 October

On the M6 over Thelwall Viaduct, the full overnight closures of 28 September to 1 October are over. Until Saturday 10 October lanes 3 and 4 close overnight on both carriageways. Then the whole northbound carriageway shuts on the night of Sunday 11 October, before the 24/7 contraflow and 40mph limit start on 12 October.

The A57 Sankey Green (Pink Eye) roundabout night closures are due to end with tonight’s shift. The council’s scheme window runs to 3 October.

Everything on this page was rechecked on 2 October 2026 against Warrington Borough Council’s roadworks pages, the council’s statutory traffic notices published on 17 September and 24 September, National Highways and National Rail’s engineering work notices. The council has published no new traffic notice since 24 September.

Motorways

M6 Thelwall Viaduct. The £27m bridge joint replacement started on 1 September. National Highways is now setting up the contraflow that takes over on 12 October. The full overnight closures of both carriageways ran from 28 September to 1 October. What is left between junctions 20 and 21 is:

All closures run 10pm to 5am. During the full closure the signed diversion is the M56, M60 and M62.

From 12 October a 24/7 contraflow and a 40mph limit take over until spring 2027, while the northbound joints are replaced. Four lanes stay open each way in the day. At night the northbound side drops to one lane between 10pm and 5am, but the northbound exit slip at junction 21 stays open throughout. The southbound side gets the same treatment from spring 2027, and the scheme runs to winter 2027-28. Our Thelwall Viaduct page has the full programme. National Highways warns that closures can change at short notice.

Birchwood services interchange: slip roads shut overnight, 7 to 16 October. National Highways has given notice of an order closing:

• the M62 eastbound entry slip at junction 9
• the M6 southbound entry slip at junction 23
• the M60 clockwise junction 12 to M62 westbound link

Emergency refuge areas on the M62 near junctions 11 and 19 and on the M6 near junctions 22 and 23 are included. The closures are expected 9pm to 6am from Wednesday 7 October to Friday 16 October, and can run on later nights until the work is finished. The scheme is the Birchwood motorway service area interchange improvement. Diversions will be signed via other junctions.

What is closed now

A57 Sankey Green (Pink Eye) roundabout, north side: due to finish this week. 10 August to 3 October 2026, closures 7pm to 1am Monday to Friday, so tonight’s shift, which runs into Saturday morning, is the last one in the window. All roads reopen outside those hours. It runs in two phases. Phase 1A closes the access into Lovely Lane, so Warrington Hospital cannot be reached that way; the entrance is still open coming south on Lovely Lane or via Priestley Street. Phase 1B closes the exit from Lovely Lane, both the entrance and exit to Priestley Street, and the exit to Sankey Way and Liverpool Road, but the route into Lovely Lane and the hospital is open.

The council has not updated the scheme page since 4 August, when it put Phase 1A at two to three weeks and Phase 1B at three to four. It has not said whether the work is on schedule or whether any closures will run past 3 October, so check the signs on site next week.

In both phases the A57 Sankey Way eastbound is closed from Cromwell Avenue to the roundabout. The signed eastbound diversion runs Cromwell Avenue, A49 Winwick Road, Lythgoes Lane (exit at Folly Lane for the hospital), Brick Street and Fennel Street, Mersey Street, Bridgefoot, Parker Street. Contractor: Tarmac Trading.

Waterworks Lane, Winwick: closed until 23 October. United Utilities is replacing a water main in a 12-week job that started on 21 September. Waterworks Lane is closed from the Winwick Link Road junction to Myddleton Lane. The phases are:

• Phase 1, Waterworks Lane, 21 September to 23 October
• Phase 2, Myddleton Lane (Waterworks Lane to Golborne Road), 23 October to 1 November
• Phase 3, Waterworks Lane again, 2 November to 13 December

The one-way order on Hornby Lane is suspended in its entirety while the work runs. The Waterworks Lane diversion is via Winwick Link Road, Newton Road, Golborne Road and Myddleton Lane. Reference 22556568.

Bewsey Road corridor: now extended to 31 December. The council’s order for the Bewsey Road corridor improvements took effect on 13 April for 22 weeks. Its 17 September notice says that because of “several delays on site” the works now run until 31 December 2026, in phases. The order covers the whole of Bewsey Road plus stretches of Tanners Lane, Bewsey Street, Froghall Lane, Arthur Street, Walker Street, Gladstone Street and Regency Square. Reference 19860648.

Coming in the next few weeks

The Ship Canal bridges: four night closures for inspections, from Monday. The council’s 17 September notice closes each crossing to traffic and pedestrians in turn:

Each closure has its own signed diversion over the other crossings. For the Chester Road bridge it is via Chester Road, Wilderspool Causeway, Walton Road and Walton New Road. For the Knutsford Road bridge it is via Wilderspool Causeway, London Road, Grappenhall Road and Chester Road. Reference 22837456.

Rixton and Woolston: six weeks of daytime closures from 5 October. Surfacing work, 8.30am to 5.30pm. It covers the whole of Maple Road, Bridge Road, Dam Lane and Epping Drive, plus parts of Moat Lane, Somerset Way, Gig Lane and the turning head on Margaret Avenue. A clearway applies on those roads and on 350 metres of Hardwick Grange, so parked cars can be moved. The council made this order on 24 September. Reference 17027028.

Bruche and Padgate: six weeks of gas main replacement from 5 October. Cadent is working on Bruche Avenue, Greenway, Lambs Lane and Grosvenor Avenue, each from its junction with Manchester Road. The council says only one of those roads will be closed at any one time. Reference 22812364.

Clay Lane, Burtonwood: evening resurfacing from 2 November. Four weeks of closures from 7pm to 1am. The diversion is long: Burtonwood Road, Westbrook Way, Cromwell Avenue, the A49, Hollins Lane, Alder Lane and Fir Tree Lane. Reference 21407089.

Shorter jobs in the council’s notices:

• Stockley Lane, Appleton, Northwich Road to the Cheshire West boundary, 5 October for one day, for Scottish Power tree cutting
• Dam Head Lane, Rixton, Bank Street to Glazebrook Lane, 6 October for one day
• Heath Lane, Croft, Kenyon Lane to Sandy Lane, from 12 October for five days
• Rushgreen Road, Lymm, Fletchers Lane to Cloverfield, 23 to 26 October, with a long signed diversion via the A6144 and the A56
• Station Road, Poulton North, Church Drive to Harpers Road, from 26 October for a week
• Partridge Close, Birchwood, outside numbers 28 to 32, from 26 October for three days, 9.30am to 2.30pm

What we could not confirm today

Bridgewater Avenue, Latchford. The council’s window for the resurfacing ended on 25 September. A week later the scheme page is unchanged and still on the roadworks list, so we cannot say whether the job finished on time.

Brian Bevan Island. The council said on 2 September that long-life road markings at the A49 Wilderspool Causeway and A5060 Chester Road roundabout were planned for the night of Tuesday 8 September, weather permitting. The scheme page still carries that wording almost a month later, so we cannot say whether the work went ahead.

What has finished

• A56 Church Road, Lymm: the window ran from 29 June to 22 August, although the scheme still appears on the council’s roadworks list.
• A57 Manchester Road eastbound, Grappenhall: the window ended on 11 August. The resurfacing and contraflow were dropped on 8 July over traffic management safety concerns. The New Cut Lane and Hawthorne Avenue junction resurfacing has no announced date.
• Liverpool Road flood risk management scheme, Sankey Bridges: finished on the road. The Hood Lane resurfacing that was meant to follow has been pushed back to later in 2026.
• Warrington Running Festival road closures on 20 September.
• M6 Thelwall full overnight closures, northbound 28 and 29 September and southbound 30 September and 1 October.
• Reaper Close, Sankey and Pineways, Appleton, short jobs from 28 and 30 September.

Omega Local Highways appears on the council’s roadworks list, but it is not a closure. Phase 3C, the Burtonwood Road and Westbrook Way roundabout, is still being worked up, with no programme published.

Trains in the next fortnight

The engineering work in the next two weeks hits early morning and late evening trains through Warrington Central.

• East Midlands Railway, Tuesday 6 to Friday 9 October: the 06:49 Liverpool Lime Street to Norwich starts from Warrington Central at 07:17. A rail replacement bus runs between Widnes and Warrington Central.
• East Midlands Railway, Saturday 10 October: the same 06:49 starts from Warrington Central at 07:17, with a bus from Widnes at 06:52 to connect with it.
• Northern, Monday 12 to Thursday 15 October: the 23:28 Manchester Oxford Road to Liverpool Lime Street terminates at Warrington Central, with a bus on to Liverpool Lime Street.

We found nothing published for Warrington Bank Quay, Warrington West, Padgate, Birchwood, Sankey for Penketh or Glazebrook in the same window.

The Thelwall Viaduct work is road only. It does not affect trains.

The swing bridges, and how often they really stop you

Three A-roads cross the Manchester Ship Canal in Warrington and every one of them does it on a bridge that swings open for shipping: the A5060 Chester Road, the A49 London Road at Stockton Heath and the A50 Knutsford Road. The canal and the shipping movements belong to Peel Ports, not the council, so nobody at the Town Hall decides when a ship comes through.

Local reputation says the bridges are forever swinging in rush hour. The council’s own quarterly record says otherwise, and the trend is sharply down.

If you want warning rather than statistics, the council runs road signs that light up when the bridges are closed to traffic, and the @trafficwarr account posts an automated alert 25 to 30 minutes before an opening. The council’s swing bridges page has the sign-up details and publishes the openings record every three months.

There is a bigger question hanging over the crossings. In July 2026 the council submitted a bid to the Department for Transport’s Structures Fund for work on the swing bridges. The fund is a £1 billion government pot launched in April 2026 for urgent structural work councils cannot afford out of ordinary budgets. Decisions are expected in autumn 2026, and anything funded has to be finished by March 2030. If Warrington’s bid succeeds, the town should expect substantial bridge work inside that window.

The routes that carry the town

Warrington’s traffic problems are a map problem. The Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal both run through the borough east to west, so almost every north-south journey funnels onto a handful of crossings. That is why a single closure at Bridgefoot or a bridge swing at Stockton Heath backs up so far so quickly.

The routes worth knowing:

• A49 runs the length of the borough, north as Winwick Road and south as Wilderspool Causeway and London Road, crossing both the Mersey at Bridgefoot and the Ship Canal at Stockton Heath. When it is blocked, there is no equivalent alternative.
• A57 is the east-west road through the north of the town, Sankey Way and Liverpool Road one side, Manchester Road the other.
• A50 Knutsford Road and A5060 Chester Road are the other two canal crossings, and the obvious diversions when the A49 bridge swings.
• A56 Church Road is Lymm’s main road, and the route villagers use to reach the motorways at Lymm Interchange.
• The M6 runs north to south along the eastern edge of the borough and the M62 along the north, which is why a motorway incident so often ends up as queueing traffic on Warrington’s local roads.

The council looks after 377 bridges and structures in the borough, including 221 road bridges, 18 subways and 33 culverts, and maintains around 10% of them every year. The swing bridges are not among them: those belong to Peel Ports, and the Bridgewater Canal bridges to the Peel Group.

Parking and getting in without a car

The council runs contract parking at three sites, charged April to March and pro rata if you join mid-year:

• Warrington West rail station: £140 a year Monday to Friday, £170 a year for seven days. Spaces are currently available.
• Time Square multi-storey: £640 a year, or £53.33 a month.
• Warrington Town Hall: £840 a year, or £70 a month, with a waiting list.

There is no park and ride scheme in Warrington. What there is instead is an unusually dense local rail network: Bank Quay, Central, Warrington West, Sankey for Penketh, Padgate, Birchwood and Glazebrook all sit inside the borough, and Central to Manchester takes 20 minutes. The trains page has the times and fares.

The council is also spending on bus priority through its Bus Service Improvement Plan, including bus gates on the A50 Long Lane westbound and the A49 Winwick Road southbound towards the town centre.

Checking for yourself

• Warrington Borough Council roadworks lists every council scheme with its own detail page, phasing and diversion.
• one.network shows all works on the highway network, including utility jobs the council is not running, and is what the council itself points people to.
• National Highways covers the M6, M62 and M56.
• The Public Notice Portal carries the council’s statutory traffic orders, which is where closures appear before they reach the roadworks page.
• Street Works section: 01925 442686, 01925 442693 or 01925 442511, 8:30am to 4:30pm Monday to Friday. Out of hours: 01925 443322.

More Warrington local information: house prices, trains to London, planning news and things to do in Warrington.