At National Highways, our ambition is to ensure our motorways and major A-roads are dependable, durable and – most importantly – are safe.

In the east, we’ve an unprecedented level of investment in our roads to increase capacity and reduce congestion to improve journey times and to make journeys more reliable. By maintaining and developing our roads, we connect people, communities and support industry; helping businesses, large and small, reach key markets.

A11 Spooner Row to Tuttles Interchange - Leaving a lasting legacy in the community

While we’ve been busy reconstructing the A11 between Spooner Row and the Tuttles Interchange, we’ve also been having conversations about how we can leave a lasting legacy within the local community. We’ve actively looked for opportunities to work with local organisations to understand where we can create a truly positive impact.

An example is our work with ‘The Hub’ in Wymondham. The Hub is a community project that provides support and resources to assist local families. We began working with The Hub back in March 2022 (before the A11 road scheme started) by providing them with 57kg of Easter-themed food and essential supplies that were distributed to the local community via their Food Club.

Then in April 2022, we helped the Hub print and deliver 3,000 leaflets as part of their ‘STEPS’ advice for the local community. This service offers guidance and support on how to plan meals and household budgeting tips to help beat inflation. Currently, we’re helping them build a new community shop and food bank that will support disadvantaged local families.

In October 2022, we also helped the Shoebox Community Hub deliver activities and support from their Norwich base. They wanted to repurpose their basement to accommodate the community ‘Stuff Hub’, which lends equipment and tools to individuals and community groups so they can host events, activities, and maintain their local area. Our team helped to clear out their old basement, before helping to redecorate it so it was fit for purpose and ready to use.

We also work with local educational establishments to help provide opportunities for students to learn about the construction industry.

We’ve attended two ‘Progression Fairs’ at Wymondham High, which help inspire students to have a future career within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) industries. We also regularly attend the Norfolk and Suffolk Skills Festival, which attracts approximately 5,000 children from across the two counties.

We’ve also hosted two events at St. Eds, where students learned about the importance of construction safety, as well as the different careers available in the highways and construction industry.

And most recently, we hosted the Norfolk Young Carers at our site compound. They are a charity that supports young people who have caring responsibilities for a family member with an illness, disability or mental health problem. Nine young carers aged between 11 and 16 years old visited our site compound (accompanied by their guardians) to learn about the world of highways and road building.

We’re happy to help out wherever we can – even if that’s just using our team and equipment to help move new picnic benches into Ketts park! We always want to be a good neighbour.

We’re not just here to rebuild the A11 road. Whether it be providing resources at community events, engaging with schools to promote careers in construction, training and upskilling local people, or supporting community projects and charities - we want to make a difference to the villages, towns and cities we work alongside.

Contact us

If you have any community initiatives that we might be able to help with, please write to info@nationalhighways.co.uk, or go to our scheme website www.nationalhighways.co.uk/A11concrete for more information.