Rugby Roadworks This Week: A426 Nights to 5 Oct, A5 Kilsby

Checked 28 September 2026. The A426 Leicester Road overnight closure is into its second week and has moved closer to town. Phase 3, Newton Manor Lane roundabout to Boughton Road roundabout, runs from tonight to 30 September. Phase 4, Boughton Road to the Tesco roundabout, starts on 29 September. The anticipated end date is still 5 October.

It is southbound only. Traffic heading into Rugby from M6 junction 1 is diverted. Traffic leaving Rugby towards the M6 is not.

Also this week, both from the National Highways closure report:

• the A5 between Kilsby and Weedon Bec is closed in both directions overnight, four nights from 28 September
• the M6 northbound between junctions 2 and 4 is closed overnight, the same four nights

We only know that because we read the legal order and the residents’ letter behind the scheme notice rather than the notice itself. Those documents also carry a phase plan, a signed diversion route and a separate instruction for lorries, none of which appear in the council’s published news article.

The A426, 21 September to 5 October: what the order actually says

The scheme notice gives the headline: 21 September to 5 October, 19:00 to 05:00, nights only, Balfour Beatty resurfacing for Warwickshire County Council.

The legal order, signed on 16 September, and the notice of intention, dated 4 September, go further:

• the closure is the southbound carriageway only, between the M6 junction 1 roundabout and the Tesco roundabout at Junction One Retail Park
• the roundabouts themselves stay open, on the order’s own wording
• a temporary 30mph limit applies to the southbound carriageway and to every roundabout from M6 junction 1 up to and including Tesco island
• the order lasts up to 18 months, or until the works finish, whichever comes first. That is the legal maximum a section 14 order runs for, not a forecast. The anticipated completion date is 5 October

The signed diversion, which the news article does not publish, is A426, A5, A361, A45, B4429, A45, A4071, A426, one way.

Lorries are told to go a different way. The notice says HGVs should use the M45 to the A45 and, in its own capitals, do not use the B4429 through Dunchurch. If you live on that road, that is the sentence to know about.

The four phases, with dates

The residents’ letter sets out a phase plan as four maps. This is the schedule, and as far as we can find it has not been published anywhere in text before.

All four run 19:00 to 05:00. Phases 1 and 2 are done. Two points for this week. Phases 3 and 4 overlap on 29 and 30 September, so two stretches are down on the same night. And Saturday is not a break: the letter confirms working on Saturday 3 October.

This also settles a contradiction we have been carrying since August. The county’s Rugby works programme lists Leicester Road as four separate single days, references SMU/0502 to SMU/0505, on 21, 22 and 28 September and 1 October. We flagged that as disagreeing with the continuous fifteen-night window. It does not: those four entries are the four phase start dates. Three of them match the letter exactly. Only phase 4 differs, listed as 1 October on the programme, re-checked on 28 September, and starting 29 September in the letter. Treat every night to 5 October as liable to closure and you will not be caught out.

Other closures this week

Two local scheme closures listed here last week have both ended. Vicarage Hill, Clifton upon Dunsmore and Manor Drive, Stretton on Dunsmore are now both marked “Completed” on the county’s Rugby works programme. So is Kennedy Road in Bilton, which had been left unmarked for a fortnight after its work finished on 17 September.

The county’s programme has no other Rugby borough scheme dated before 19 October. Utility works, such as gas, water and telecoms, are not on that programme. They are on the county’s roadworks map.

Trains: a quiet week at Rugby

London Northwestern Railway’s alterations calendar, checked on 28 September, lists three changes for the rest of September. None touches Rugby station:

• Monday 28 September, late night: buses replace trains between Milton Keynes Central and Northampton
• Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 September, late night: amended services to and from Bushey
• Wednesday 30 September, late night: buses replace trains between Watford Junction and St Albans Abbey

If you are coming back from London late on Monday, the Northampton change is the one to check, because it sits on the Euston line that Rugby trains use. The calendar has published nothing for October yet.

Motorways and the A5: two sets of four nights

National Highways’ seven-day closure report was last updated at 15:30 on 25 September. It covers Friday 25 September to Thursday 1 October.

The A5 is closed in both directions between Kilsby and Weedon Bec, 20:00 to 06:00, on the nights starting 28, 29 and 30 September and 1 October. The report gives the scheme as horticultural works between Weedon Bec and the Danes Way roundabout, with a diversion via National Highways and local authority roads. Kilsby is about five miles south east of Rugby, so this is the A5 towards Towcester and Milton Keynes. Southbound laybys on that stretch are also closed in the daytime.

The M6 northbound is closed from junction 2 to junction 4, 21:00 to 06:00, on the same four nights, for maintenance. That stretch is west of Rugby, between Coventry and the M42, so it is not in the borough. It is on the route from Rugby to Birmingham. Last week the same scheme closed the southbound carriageway.

Nothing is listed at M6 junction 1, at Catthorpe, on the M45, or on the M1 between junctions 17 and 20.

What is programmed after that

From the county council’s Rugby borough works programme, checked on 28 September. These are resurfacing schemes with a scheduled date, not utility works.

Daventry Road at Dunchurch finally has a date. It sat on the programme with no date for more than two months, and is now listed for 15 March 2027. Kennedy Road in Bilton, Manor Drive at Stretton, Vicarage Hill at Clifton, Eastlands Place, Coventry Road at Cawston, Castle Mound Way, Rugby Road at Harborough Magna, the Fosseway at Princethorpe and an earlier Leicester Road scheme are all marked complete.

Where to check live

• Warwickshire County Council’s roadworks map at warwickshire.gov.uk/roadworksmap covers borough and county roads, including utility works, with dates and traffic management for each.
• National Highways covers the motorways and trunk roads: the M6, M45, M1 and the A5. Local closures do not appear there and motorway closures do not appear on the county map, so on a bad morning you need both.
• The scheme notices are worth more than the map. Each one carries a letter, a legal order and often a diversion plan as separate PDFs, and as the A426 shows, those documents routinely contain the direction of travel, the phasing and the diversion route that the summary page leaves out.
• For the trains, London Northwestern Railway’s alterations calendar lists every planned change by date, several weeks out, and names the operators affected. It is more useful than the National Rail homepage, which only shows today.

The junction the town has been arguing about

The A426/A4071 Avon Mill and Hunters Lane scheme is the one everyone means when they talk about Rugby congestion. The county council’s proposal would enlarge the Avon Mill roundabout, widen every entry to three lanes, replace the Hunters Lane T-junction with a roundabout, link the two with a short dual carriageway and a new bridge over the River Avon, and add a cycle route from the A426 Leicester Road to Wood Street. The stated aim is to stop traffic rat-running through Mill Road tunnel and Murray Road.

Where it has got to is the honest part. The council’s public engagement opened on 8 February 2024 and closed on 20 March 2024. Its published next step was to apply for planning permission, and its published expectation then was that “construction could start by Spring/Summer 2025”, subject to design and funding. That window has passed and we can find no newer date on the council’s own scheme page. The scheme is live, it is not built, and nobody should plan a journey around it yet.

Cameras on two Rugby junctions, consultation open

Warwickshire County Council is asking whether it should enforce moving traffic restrictions with cameras, and two of the six sites it has picked are in Rugby: the yellow box at Clifton Road and Moultrie Road, and the school street at Lansdowne Place by Eastlands Primary School. The engagement runs to 25 October. We have written that up separately on our news pages.

Parking in town, in one line

Rugby Borough Council runs ten town centre car parks and the split is worth £5 a day. John Barford and Westway are £5 for up to eleven hours. Gas Street, Newbold Road, Railway Terrace and Old Market Place are £10 for the same stay. The other four are short stay only, capped at three hours for £1.30.

Every tariff, the Sunday rules, season tickets, station parking, the permit zones and what to do about a ticket are on our parking in Rugby page, which we keep current.

Out of town: the Draycote closure

If your plans include the reservoir, Severn Trent’s closure page, re-checked on 28 September, still says the circular route “is currently closed due to upgrade works happening on the reservoir”. You can walk, run or cycle part of it, but there is no way through the construction area, so it is an out-and-back rather than a loop. Phase 1 runs from Farborough Bank and Toft Bank up to the Memorial Garden; phase 2 from near the Sailing Club along Hensborough, Saddle, Barn and Draycote banks to the Valve Tower. All construction on the dams is “expected to be finished by late 2026”. No reopening date has been published.

What changes next

Rugby Borough Council’s Cabinet approved a ten-year town centre delivery plan on 3 August 2026, branded Rugby Revitalised. It covers route improvements between the Clock Tower and Old Market Place, a new public event space, and work on St Andrew’s Church and Gardens and the outdoor market. None of that has a start date attached. Expect town centre street works to follow, and expect them to be announced piecemeal.

Separately, the borough’s application to extend the town centre vehicle ban from 11am to 4pm out to 11pm has been with the county council since May with no statutory notice published. That notice, when it comes, is the point at which anyone can object.

For anything happening this week, the county council’s roadworks map remains the only complete source. We check it, the scheme notices behind it, and the borough’s own announcements when we write up disruption on our news pages.