M25 closure – live: Drivers delayed as motorway section shut all weekend

A leading railway figure has offered some advice to travellers who risk being caught up in the M25 closure over the weekend, Simon Calder writes.

Mark Hopwood, managing director of Great Western Railway, told The Independent’s daily travel podcast: “There isn’t, sadly, a railway equivalent of the M25 so we can’t necessarily replicate all the journeys – but actually one of the great things in London at Farringdon is you can interchange from the Elizabeth Line to Thameslink in about 45 seconds.”

The central London station of Farringdon will allow anyone coming from Heathrow airport or Reading on the Elizabeth Line to change to a Thameslink train to Gatwick airport, Brighton, Luton airport or Cambridge.

“I think people will find that they could maybe make their journey by train and do it in a decent amount of time,” the GWR boss said.

“If you’ve ended up on one of those strange flight itineraries where you need to get from Heathrow to Gatwick, you can do that quite easily.”

Mr Hopwood was speaking at the unveiling of a revolutionary new battery-powered train for a line in west London.

National Highways project lead Jonathan Wade has warned that how well the area copes with the M25 closure will partly depend on whether drivers stick to official diversions.

He told the PA news agency: “How many people are going to take the initiative and try and use satnavs? There’s probably a greater risk of congestion by people just doing their own thing and thinking they can perhaps beat the signs and find a shorter or quicker route.

“That will cause further congestion on some of the key junctions so please avoid doing that if at all possible.”

Business owners in the areas along the diversion route have told of cuts they have made to their services in anticipation of traffic.

Mark Pollak, owner of Billy Tong, which caters for events and sells biltong at markets, told PA he expects to see 50% of the firm’s turnover for the weekend go “down the drain”.

Mr Pollak said he had to refuse a request for Billy Tong to cater an event in Guildford and had to cancel its stall at Surbiton Farmers’ Market on Saturday, with staff not wanting to face expected traffic to get to jobs.

Two miles of congestion was seen on the M25 in Surrey on Saturday morning after a section of it was closed.

A five-mile stretch of the motorway between junctions 10 and 11 was closed in both directions at 9pm on Friday and will remain inaccessible until 6am on Monday while a bridge is demolished and a new gantry installed.

Concerns have been raised that thousands of drivers will be stuck in gridlocked traffic over the weekend during the unprecedented closure, with one councillor calling it a “nightmare”.

National Highways South East (NHSE), in a post to X, formerly Twitter, said there were two miles of tailbacks on approach to the closure at junction 10 on Saturday morning.

While some businesses have been bracing for the impact of the M25 closure, others were not expecting to be affected badly.

The Black Prince pub in Addlestone said it does not expect the diversion route to affect its business, with one of its staff members explaining customers are mostly local and in walking distance.

Ammara Kanwal, director of Code Kids, cancelled a coding club session due to take place at Cobham Free School on Saturday over fears she would not be able to make it there on time.

“It was a bit of a disappointment,” she told the PA news agency.

“I am the one who cancelled, it was my business, so I am having to issue a refund for tomorrow.

“I mean, nobody wants to travel somewhere for two hours if it doesn’t take that long, it’s not fair.”

Traffic is building up on a separate section of the M25 after a “multiple vehicle collision” between Junctions 5 and 6, some 35 miles away from the closure.

Drone footage has captured workers demolishing a bridge and installing a new gantry on the closed section of the M25.

Miles-long tailbacks had already begun on Saturday in the run-up to the five-mile closure between Junctions 10 and 11.