Long delays on A585 Windy Harbour to Skippool due to temporary traffic lights

A phasing issue with the roundabout’s temporary traffic lights has caused chaos with long queues of traffic in both directions.

Traffic is currently queued west along Amounderness way to the Norcross roundabout and east along Mains Lane to Little Singleton.

There is also heavy congestion on other routes around Skippool, including long delays for those travelling along the Shard Bridge southbound from Hambleton.

National Highways are building a new offline bypass around the village of Little Singleton to reduce congestion and remove a major bottleneck on the main road to Fleetwood.

The road layout at the Skippool junction changed from a roundabout to a temporary signalised junction in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The agency said it is aware of the delays and is investigating the issue with its works contractors. It is advising motorists to allow extra time for journeys until the lights are fixed.

One motorist said it took them an hour outside rush hour to drive from Norcross roundabout to the Skippool junction – a journey of just 1.5 miles.

Why is traffic so bad at Skippool roundabout today?

National Highways say they have spoken to the contractors carrying out the works and were told that the temporary traffic lights at Skippool roundabout are “operating as intended”.

The contractors explained that congestion is as a result of the new layout and traffic management. They said it will “hopefully settle over the next few days”.

But National Highways appeared sceptical of this explanation and sent its own engineers to the site this morning to monitor traffic flow.

The agency concluded that the phasing of the temporary traffic lights was not working optimally and engineers have now made adjustments to the timings.

“We expect this should alleviate some of the congestion”, said a spokesman for National Highways.

“We're now liaising with our contractors with regard to these temporary traffic lights on A585 at the Skippool roundabout,” said a spokesman for National Highways.

“We're aware of a potential phasing issue which is causing long delays on all approaches this morning.

“Apologies for the inconvenience.”