A jam-busting road is being built by Severn Trent Water to take 7,000 heavy lorries each year away from Kidderminster town centre.

The £1.7 million road to the Roundhill sewage treatment works provides an alternative route to the site from the A449 Kidderminster to Wolverhampton Road, and ends the need for lorries to use Dunsley Road and Gibbet Lane.

Work is on target and expected to end this month. Gillian Bullimore, Severn Trent land use planning manager, said it would remove the need for the large vehicles to drive through the town.

“In 2006 we estimated that each year nearly 7,000 heavy goods vehicles were driving in and out of our Roundhill sewage treatment works via Dunsley Road and Gibbet Lane,” she said. “Because of this we decided that a new access road to the sewage works was essential. We do not only hope to ease traffic on Dunsley Road but to also help make the area safer for local residents and schoolchildren.”

Severn Trent Water has carried out multi-million pound pipe-laying in Kidderminster and Bewdley areas for two years and was criticised because of roadworks causing traffic jams and commuter chaos.

Officials hope that relieving parts of the town of heavy congestion will be a point in their favour. One project has been a £6 million project for the construction of an extra water main, linking the Trimpley Treatment Works, near Bewdley, with an underground service reservoir at Hollywaste, near Cleobury Mortimer. Another has seen work on a £1 million scheme to replace more than 6,000 metres of old and crumbling mains in Kidderminster.