Motorists heading into Birmingham city centre along the Aston Expressway are facing delays for at least eight days.

Three slip roads from Spaghetti Junction onto the city-bound route were closed after engineers found structural problems late on Thursday, and at least one of them is set to remain shut until December 3. 

Other intermittent road closures are being introduced to deal with faults spotted on the M6, which passes above the lanes.

Drivers using the slip road from the Tyburn Road onto the Aston Expressway will be worst affected, because that route will be off limits until a week on Monday.

And today, drivers on the M6 northbound carriageway will not be able to leave the motorway heading into the city centre on the Aston Expressway. They will either have to leave the motorway one stop early at junction 5 in Castle Bromwich, or one stop later in Great Barr.

The other affected route will be the A5127 from Sutton Coldfield and Erdington, which flows onto the Aston Expressway. 

It will be closed tonight and tomorrow, and subject to a 30mph limit when drivers are allowed to use it.

Andy Hitch from the Highways Agency said it was hoped that engineers would be able to work at times when the routes would ordinarily have been least busy. 

“Most of the closures will be at night to minimise disruption to the public, and we anticipate that works will be completed during the first week of December. While the agency insists that the work was “unplanned” and a response to engineers’ concerns, it also coincides with the biggest shopping weekend of the year,” he said.

John Lamb of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce said that while emergency repairs obviously needed to be carried out in the interest of public safety, the closures were a blow.

“It is just unfortunate and disappointing that it has had to happen in the build-up to Christmas,” he said. 

“I think it also clearly shows how reliant we have become on our cars, because there is not much of a public transport alternative.”

Diversion signs have now been posted near the affected routes, but for many drivers the Aston Expressway is an irreplaceable artery to the centre of Birmingham.

However, the Highways Agency insists that maintaining 35-year-old Spaghetti Junction’s web of connecting routes is a never-ending task.

It also points out that the interchange deals with twice as much traffic as it was designed for.

It is understood that after this weekend the slip roads that are not being intermittently closed will be out of bounds to motorists for at least two more nights until December 3.