Highway bosses have confirmed when they hope a highly-anticipated multi-million-pound flyover will open to motorists.

National Highways’ M2 Junction 5 project manager, Daniel Rollinson, says if all goes well, the £92 million Stockbury Flyover will be available to traffic in July.

The scheme aims to make journeys easier and safer for motorists travelling between Maidstone, Sittingbourne and Sheppey on the A249.

Daniel, a 35-year-old from Ramsgate, has been focused on the construction of the flyover since work began in 2021.

He said: “Anybody who’s driven through the scheme, particularly in the last nine to 12 months, would have seen a lot of change, specifically with the flyover itself.

“The flyover is now complete, so the retaining walls are done and we’re just doing the curbing now and then we’ve got to actually build the road layers before it is available for traffic to use.

“We're aiming to open the flyover itself to traffic sort of July, early July to mid-July.

“Obviously, we'll always try and better that where we can, but we've still got a lot of work to do, some key works, particularly on the north (Sittingbourne) side of the roundabout.

“People will see that that's not as complete as the southern (Maidstone) side, and we've still got a lot of complicated work to do on that end.

“But we're confident that by mid-summer, we should be in a position to allow people to use the flyover.”

Currently, part of the new South Green Link Road (the former A249 Maidstone-bound), which will link South Green Lane to Oad Street is closed.

This is for the safety of National Highways’ workforce while drainage improvements take place on the link road and the A249 itself - a stretch that was previously liable to flood in heavy rain.

The link is expected to be open in mid-June but this is subject to favourable weather conditions.

Daniel continued: “After the flyover is opened we will still have bits of work to do, like landscaping, but in terms of major closures, we should be through it.

“However, we may still need some lane or maybe overnight closures, but in terms of our big closures by sort of mid-summer, they should be finished.”

The M2 Junction 5 scheme is still set to be completed in winter 2025, however, Daniel has assured motorists this is for the final landscaping works and construction that is “a little bit setback and doesn’t really disrupt the travelling public”.

Daniel added: “There's a lot of work that's hard to see as you're driving through, and we appreciate that people can't always really get perspective of the work that's happening.

“People will find that there are some roads we need to close for longer, and that's usually because we've found things that were unforeseen, and we've had to change what we've had to do and change our whole scope around what we deliver to make the roads fit for purpose, but also for safety.

“For National Highways safety is always our number one imperative. So we need to build a road that's safe, which includes crash barriers, drainage and things like that.

“So there is a lot of that work happens away from the carriageway that people may not always see.

“While we've been building this job we try as much as we can to strike the balance between having to build a job safely and efficiently without disruption to the local public.

“We really do appreciate that people have maintained patience with us and they've really worked with us to allow us to build what we need to build.”

National Highways’ improvements have seen the existing Stockbury roundabout replaced with a new interchange, the flyover, to provide free-flowing movement on the A249.

Two new dedicated free-flowing slip roads are also being created with a left turn for traffic travelling from the A249 Maidstone-bound to the M2 London-bound and a left turn from the A249 Sheppey-bound to the M2 coastbound.

Maidstone Road (the old A249) to the Stockbury Roundabout has been closed and re-routed to link with Oad Street.

The existing junction of Oad Street with the A249 has been closed with a new link provided north of the existing Oad Street to connect with the A249 Stockbury roundabout.