Chichester Roadworks This Week: Stockbridge Rd and West St

Stockbridge Road is still closed. SGN shut it on Saturday 10 October to replace the gas main between the A27 roundabout and Grosvenor Road, for “approximately seven weeks”, which takes it to late November. There is no through traffic, the Grosvenor Road bus stop is suspended, and the signed diversion runs along the A27 to the B2145, then the B2201 through the Sidlesham triangle.

East Street and the west end of West Street are the city centre streets in work this week. The county council has redrawn the street works programme again: East Street now runs from 24 October to Sunday 8 November, and the west end of West Street from Monday 2 to Sunday 8 November, with parking suspended. The two closures that were due before Christmas, South Street and the east end of West Street, have moved to 4 to 31 January 2027.

Is the A27 at Chichester closed this week? No. National Highways’ closure report for Friday 30 October to Thursday 5 November, updated at 3.29pm on 30 October, books no closure of the bypass between Fishbourne and Portfield, and no slip road closure at Chichester, on any night from Monday 2 to Thursday 5 November. Lay-bys between Fishbourne and Warblington can be coned off from this week under a separate notice, which the report does not list.

This page was rechecked on Monday 2 November 2026. Where a source would not load for us that day, the section says so.

The Chichester roadworks and travel changes to know:

• Now, to late November. Stockbridge Road closed between the A27 roundabout and Grosvenor Road for gas main replacement, about seven weeks from 10 October. The Grosvenor Road bus stop is suspended.
• Now, to Sunday 8 November. East Street street works, which started on Saturday 24 October.
• Monday 2 to Sunday 8 November. West Street, west end: street works with parking suspended.
• Monday 2 to Thursday 5 November. No closure is booked on the A27 Chichester bypass or its slip roads.
• On or after Monday 2 November, about three weeks. A27 lay-by closures between Fishbourne and Warblington, under National Highways notice NH/SE/2026/A27/63.
• Monday 9 to Sunday 22 November. Tower Street street works, with parking suspended.
• Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 November. Buses replace trains between Arundel, Angmering, Littlehampton and Barnham. London Victoria to Chichester services are affected.
• Monday 23 to Sunday 29 November. Tower Street closed to traffic, with parking suspended.
• Monday 30 November. Birdham Road goes under temporary traffic lights for about four weeks.
• Wednesday 2 to Friday 4 December. East Street and Little London closed.
• Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 December. Chapel Street closed.
• Monday 4 to Sunday 31 January 2027. South Street and the east end of West Street closed.
• On-street permits. West Sussex published its 2026-27 prices on 15 October: a Chichester resident permit is now £68 a year, a book of 10 visitor permits £7.

Stockbridge Road is closed to late November

This is the closure to plan around, and it has been in place since Saturday 10 October. We re-read SGN’s project page and both county council pages on 2 November. None carries a progress update. The city council’s website would not load for us that day, so we could not re-check its notice; when we last read it, on 6 October, nothing in it had changed since 9 September.

Chichester City Council has posted SGN’s notice for Stockbridge Road, published on 6 September and last edited on 9 September. SGN is replacing the gas main, and says it has “no option than to complete this work under a road closure”.

Phase one started on Saturday 10 October and runs for approximately seven weeks. The closure sits on Stockbridge Road, the A286, from the junction with the A27 roundabout to Grosvenor Road. What SGN’s own leaflet says will happen:

• No through vehicle access between those two junctions.
• Resident and shop vehicle access inside the closure is maintained by a diversion at the Grosvenor Road end. There is no access from the A27 end.
• Pedestrian and cycle access through the closure is maintained.
• Bus routes, including school buses, will be affected. SGN tells passengers to check with the operator.
• Bin collection days stay the same unless the council says otherwise.
• Emergency vehicles get through from the A27 end, with gatekeepers on site 24 hours.

Phase two starts on Monday 30 November and runs about four weeks. That one is on Birdham Road, between the junction with The Meadows and the junction with Strides Court, under multi-way temporary traffic lights rather than a closure.

There is no firm reopening date. In October the county council’s SGN Stockbridge Road page showed the works record as 10 October to 27 November. On 2 November that page, its diversion page and SGN’s own project page gave only “approximately 7 weeks” from 10 October, and none named an end date. Treat late November as the plan, not a promise. The signed diversion is the A27 onto the B2145, then right onto the B2201 at the Sidlesham triangle, under multi-way lights, which are manually operated from 7am to 7pm every day. The Grosvenor Road bus stop is suspended for the whole closure, with a temporary stop nearby. SGN’s project page says there are two additional buses an hour during the closure. We could not confirm which bus routes are diverted, or how: Stagecoach’s Chichester and Bognor Regis service updates page still said “no service updates” when we checked it on 2 November, more than three weeks into the closure. The detail, including the council’s funding for extra bus capacity, is in our Stockbridge Road closure story.

SGN’s reason, in its own words, is that the section being replaced is “a very old metal gas pipe that has had a number of emergency gas leaks”. It says the closure will be lifted early if phase one finishes inside the seven weeks.

It lands on top of the city centre works. This week East Street and the west end of West Street are both in work, and Tower Street follows from 9 November. Anyone coming into the city from Donnington, Birdham, the Witterings or Selsey has lost their road into town while the main streets are still being dug up.

Is the A27 at Chichester closed this week?

National Highways’ resurfacing of the four bypass roundabouts, Fishbourne, Stockbridge, Whyke and Bognor, was programmed from 1 September to 8 October, with every closure running 8pm to 6am. No closure of the bypass itself has been booked since 21 September.

Nothing is booked at Chichester this week. The live road closure report we read on 2 November was updated at 3.29pm on Friday 30 October and covers Friday 30 October to Thursday 5 November. We read every A27 entry in its spreadsheet for every night from Monday 2 to Thursday 5 November. None closes the carriageway or a slip road between Fishbourne and Portfield. The report for the nights from Friday 6 November had not been published when we checked.

The lay-bys are the one thing to expect. National Highways traffic notice NH/SE/2026/A27/63 gave the lay-bys between Fishbourne and Warblington about three weeks of 24-hour phased closures from on or after Monday 2 November 2026. Lay-by closures do not appear in the closure report, so a coned-off lay-by this month is not a sign that the road is about to shut.

Two things are worth holding in mind before you read an empty report as an open road. The report lists closures only: an order that imposes a speed limit, a lane restriction or a lay-by closure without shutting the carriageway never appears in it. And closures can be added at short notice, which National Highways says itself. Check the report on the evening you travel.

Elsewhere on the A27 and A3, 2 to 5 November

From the same report, the nearest booked closures either side of the city, all overnight:

• Monday 2 and Tuesday 3 November, 9pm to 6am: A27 Harts Farm Way link road closed in both directions, at Havant, for resurfacing.
• Monday 2 to Thursday 5 November, 9pm to 6am each night: A27 westbound entry and exit slip roads at Adur closed, between Holmbush and Lancing Manor, for surveys.
• Thursday 5 November, 8pm to 6am: A27 westbound entry slip road at Patcham, Brighton, closed for electrical works.
• Monday 2 to Thursday 5 November, 9pm to 6am each night: A3 northbound closed from Dennis to Burpham, Guildford, for structures work.
• Wednesday 4 November, 9pm to 6am: A3 southbound closed from Thursley to Liphook, and between the slips at the Hogs Back, for resurfacing.

Weeknights are twice as busy as the weekend

Counting every closure listed on the whole National Highways network, day by day, shows why an evening drive is a different proposition from a weekend one:

286 on a Monday night and 122 on a Saturday. If you have a choice about when to make a long evening drive on the trunk roads, the weekend is the quieter bet.

The city centre street works, phase by phase

The digging that will actually reach most people is in the main shopping streets. West Sussex County Council and Chichester District Council started installing mobile network infrastructure in the city centre on Monday 21 September. The programme published on the county council’s Chichester OpenDigital project page now runs to 31 January 2027.

The programme has been redrawn a third time, and again without a date or a note. What changed between 12 October and 2 November:

• South Street and the east end of West Street moved out of the Christmas shopping weeks. They were due from 19 November, with South Street running to 22 December. Both are now road closures from 4 to 31 January 2027.
• Tower Street comes back. Its only phase in October was listed as 21 September to 10 October. It now has street works from 9 to 22 November and a full road closure from 23 to 29 November.
• East Street is back in work, from 24 October to 8 November, after a first phase listed as ending on 11 October.
• North Street and the west end of West Street shrank. North Street is now listed as 24 September to 10 October, not to 25 October. West Street’s west end is now one week, 2 to 8 November, where the October table gave it four weeks to 1 November.
• The two short December closures are unchanged: East Street with Little London, 2 to 4 December, and Chapel Street, 7 to 8 December.

The page still does not say whether North Street and the earlier West Street work finished, or why the dates moved. Its “Latest update” box is still headed “West Street works starting soon” and still describes Chapel Street to the Dutch Roundabout staying open under two-way temporary traffic management, with Chapel Street to The Cross closed towards South Street. It does not say which days that applies to, and it does not match the table, which lists the east end of West Street as closed only in January. We have given both. A second box thanks East Street businesses for their patience.

The page says timetables and milestone updates will be published there as they become available. It has not published which sections of each street are affected on which day, or what the works mean for deliveries and market trading.

The earlier redraws are on record: on 23 September East Street was due to start on 28 September; on 27 September and again on 30 September the dates moved without a note.

The full story, including what is being installed and what it is a precursor to, is on our city centre street works page.

Market Avenue and Basin Road: the gas main works

SGN’s contractors I&G Contractors Limited have been replacing the gas main on sections of Market Avenue and Basin Road since June. Chichester City Council published the programme as starting Monday 15 June for 13 weeks, which took it to around 14 September.

The phases, as published:

• Phase 1, from 15 June for two weeks: lane closure on Market Avenue, plus an overnight closure of the South Street junction, 8pm to 6am.
• Phase 2, from about 29 June for three weeks: eastbound closure of Market Avenue, with a signed diversion.
• Phase 3, from 13 July: Basin Road closed from its junction with Canal Wharf to the railway crossing.
• Phase 4: lane closures on the one-way section of Basin Road, from the railway crossing to Market Avenue, once phase 3 finishes.

Basin Road was given as eight weeks in total. Pedestrian access is maintained throughout, and access to properties inside a closure is maintained where it is safe. The council warned of a “major impact to bus routes”. The full notice is on the city council’s website.

The programme ran out in mid-September and nobody has said whether it was met. When we last read that notice, on 6 October, it still carried no completion update, as it had not since it was posted on 16 June, and the council’s news page had published nothing about Market Avenue since. The city council’s website would not load for us on 2 November, so we could not re-check either page. We cannot tell you the work has finished, and we are not going to imply it has.

We also could not list which bus stops are currently being missed, on Market Avenue or anywhere else. The Stagecoach service update page the council points readers to still loads as an empty shell for us, and its Chichester and Bognor Regis page still said “no service updates” on 2 November, more than three weeks into a closure that SGN itself says affects bus and school bus routes. Check with Stagecoach on the day.

The standing lay-by orders on the A27

Two separate orders let National Highways close lay-bys on the bypass, which is why you will find them coned off when nothing appears to be happening.

• The Chichester bypass notice. Traffic notice NH/SE/2026/A27/63, published 6 August 2026, gives notice of 24-hour phased closure of the lay-bys on both carriageways between the Bognor Road roundabout (A259) and the Warblington interchange (A259). The Chichester bypass section was expected to take about three weeks from on or after 1 September 2026. The remaining sites, between Fishbourne and Warblington, are due to take about three weeks from on or after Monday 2 November 2026, which is this week. The order came into force on 30 August 2026 and can run for up to eighteen months.
• The Area 4 order. A separate order covering the A27 between the Warblington interchange and Lancing came into force on 1 July 2026 and runs to 24 December 2027. It authorises closure of any lay-by on the route whenever maintenance needs it, with no diversion.

We have not been able to read the Public Notice Portal since 23 September. Its search results are drawn by the browser and returned nothing to us, so we cannot say whether a newer traffic notice has been published since, including the statutory order for the Stockbridge Road closure.

Trains

The half-term blockade west of Chichester was due to end on Friday 30 October, and the next closure that touches Chichester trains is the weekend of 14 and 15 November. We read National Rail’s engineering works list on 2 November: it had no notice that week for Chichester, Barnham, Bognor Regis, Havant or anywhere else on the West Coastway.

• Monday 26 to Friday 30 October (due to have ended). No trains were planned west of Chichester while Network Rail replaced the signalling around Havant. Network Rail’s scheme page still carried no completion update on 2 November, so we cannot confirm from Network Rail that the line reopened on time; National Rail’s list that day carried no notice for it. Our story on the half-term closure has the detail.
• Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 November. Engineering work closes all lines between Arundel, Angmering, Littlehampton and Barnham. Buses replace trains between Arundel and Barnham, and between Angmering and Barnham via Littlehampton. Southern services between London Victoria and Chichester, and between Horsham or Littlehampton and Bognor Regis, are affected; trains run between Barnham and Southampton Central. On the Sunday, tickets are accepted on South Western Railway between the Portsmouth stations and Southampton Central. The notice gives no start or finish times. National Rail notice.
• Monday 21 to Thursday 24 December, late nights and early mornings. Work between Barnham and Chichester. On the Monday to Wednesday the 22:35 London Victoria to Chichester ends at Barnham and the 23:16 ends at Littlehampton, with buses on to Chichester. On the Tuesday to Thursday mornings the 04:55 Chichester to Brighton starts from Barnham, with a bus from Chichester. National Rail notice.

When we checked it on 4 October, National Rail’s forward list also had a Barnham notice from 7 December, which we will add when it comes closer. Southern’s own planned engineering work page still loads as a “loading service updates” shell for us, so check National Rail before you travel.

Parking in Chichester

Chichester District Council runs the city’s car parks. All are open 24 hours a day and all take MiPermit as well as payment at the machine. Charges apply Monday to Saturday 8am to 8pm, including bank and public holidays, and Sunday 10am to 5pm. The long-stay car parks at Avenue de Chartres, Basin Road and Cattle Market charge to 6pm rather than 8pm.

West Sussex has now published its new on-street permit prices. On 15 October the county uploaded a charges PDF headed “West Sussex On-Street Parking Charges 2026-2027 (Effective 1st October 2026)”, and its permit page is now stamped 16 October 2026. This covers on-street residents’, visitors’ and non-residents’ permits, not the district council car parks.

Updated 17 October: the county’s 2026-27 permit charges are out. The new Chichester rates are below, with last year’s in brackets.

• Full day primary resident permit, Chichester: £68 a year (£63), or £36 for six months (£34). A low emission vehicle pays £51 (£48) and £27 (£26).
• A second permit at the same address: £136 a year (£126), or £102 low emission (£95).
• Chichester Zone E is unchanged: £209 a year for a first resident permit, £157 low emission; a second Zone E permit is £260, or £195 low emission.
• Part-day permits in Chichester are unchanged at £49 a year, while Billingshurst, Horsham, East Grinstead and Worthing went from £35 to £40.
• Visitor permits: a book of 10 is now £7 (£6). A daily 8-hour visitor permit is £2.80 (£2.40), a weekly one £16.80 (£14.40), and a weekly 12-hour Chichester S permit £29.40 (£25.20).
• Non-resident permits: £410 a year (£380), or £308 low emission (£285).

The full table, with six-month and part-day prices for every zone, is in the county’s on-street parking charges PDF.

The district council’s signpost to the new prices was no help until this week. Its car parks page tells readers to “visit the West Sussex County Council Traffic Regulation Order pages” for the increases. The link behind those words goes to the county’s permit charges section, which did not show the new rates until 15 October. We also checked the county’s Chichester live TRO consultations page on 23 September. It lists no live consultations at all for the district, and is stamped 7 September 2026.

The car park tariffs below were last re-checked against the council’s own page on 6 October 2026. That page refused our request on 2 November, so we could not confirm them again this week.

The gap between the tariffs is the single most useful thing to know about parking here. Four hours costs £10.00 in a central short-stay car park and £4.60 in a long stay. The car parks on the central short-stay tariff are Baffins Lane, Little London, Market Avenue and St John’s, all close to the Cross. A five-minute walk out to a long-stay bay halves the bill.

Three city car parks are worth knowing by name:

• Northgate (PO19 1BL), 907 spaces, the largest in the city, long stay, with 13 accessible bays and two electric vehicle bays.
• Cattle Market (PO19 1JW), 836 spaces, long stay, 10 accessible bays, height restriction 2.3 metres.
• East Pallant (PO19 1UF), 165 spaces, nine accessible bays and two electric vehicle bays. This is the nearest car park to the cathedral, which has no visitor parking of its own.

Florence Road (PO19 7PY), 20 spaces, is free at all times, maximum stay three hours, no return within three hours.

Market Road and the northern part of Orchard Street are season-ticket only Monday to Friday, and pay and display at weekends and on bank holidays. There is no park and ride in the district, so every drive into the city ends in a city-centre car park.

Parking out in the district

The council also runs the coastal and market-town car parks, and several have seasonal tariffs. The summer season rate at Bracklesham Lane and the other seasonal car parks runs 1 April to 31 October, so it ended on Saturday. We could not read the council’s car parks page on 2 November to give the winter charges.

• Bosham, Bosham Lane (PO18 8HT), 379 spaces. Charges 8am to 6pm every day. Two coach bays and a bus stop.
• Bracklesham Lane, Bracklesham Bay (PO20 8HP), 97 spaces. Seasonal charges all year, 8am to 6pm.
• Marine Drive, West Wittering (PO20 8HE), 65 bays plus about 150 on grass. Seasonal, 8am to 6pm. This is the council car park, not the beach car park run by the West Wittering Estate, which charges separately and more.
• Selsey East Beach (PO20 0SZ), roughly 181 spaces, height restriction 2.1 metres, seasonal charges all year.
• Midhurst Grange Road (GU29 9LT), 303 spaces, and Petworth Pound Street (GU28 0DX), 236 spaces. Both charge Monday to Saturday 8am to 6pm and Sunday 10am to 5pm.
• Crossfield, Fernhurst (GU27 3JL) and Sylvia Beaufoy, Petworth (GU28 0ET) are free at all times.

Why the A27 matters so much here

Chichester has one road that carries almost everything. The A27 bypass runs along the southern edge of the city, and every east-west journey through the district uses part of it. West to east, its junctions are the Fishbourne roundabout, the Stockbridge roundabout, the Whyke roundabout and the Bognor Road roundabout, then it continues past Westhampnett towards Boxgrove and Fontwell.

That single carriageway of dependency is why a closure at one roundabout reroutes the whole city rather than one street. It is also why the Stockbridge Road closure, in place since 10 October, is felt so widely. Stockbridge Road is the spoke that connects the Stockbridge roundabout to the city centre, and the peninsula villages south of the bypass have no other direct route in.

The long-term picture is that nothing large is funded. West Sussex County Council states plainly that the Chichester A27 scheme was cancelled in 2017, and that the Arundel, Worthing and Lancing schemes were cancelled in 2024. The county council is working with Transport for the South East to press the government to put A27 improvements back into the Road Investment Strategy, and in the meantime is pursuing small-scale improvements alongside new development. The capacity of the A27 was also one of the constraints the council put to the Planning Inspectors when it argued for a lower housing target, which is covered on the planning news page.

Local schemes in progress

A285 Chichester to Tangmere active travel corridor. West Sussex County Council approved this for its capital programme in May 2026. It will run from Chichester city centre out to Tangmere via St Pancras, Westhampnett Road, Church Road, Footpath 553 and Shopwhyke Lakes, in two phases. The plan includes a two-way cycle track on the north side of St Pancras with the road reduced to one traffic lane, a two-way cycle track on the south side of Westhampnett Road that removes around ten on-street parking spaces, bus priority at the Westhampnett Road and St James Road lights, and raised crossings on the side roads. The council is developing initial designs and expects to finish that stage by May 2027, with a design review in summer 2027. There is no construction date.

Chichester public realm improvements. This is the big one behind the street works now under way, and it has a date at last. West Sussex County Council’s scheme FAQs say the project is in detailed design, that a delivery partner will be sought over spring and summer 2026, and that construction is expected to start in February 2027. It will resurface North Street and East Street in York stone, extend the pedestrian zone to St Peters in the north and Little London and Baffins Lane to the east, and add trees, planting, seating and bins. The council puts the cost at £10.5 million, of which West Sussex County Council is contributing more than £7 million, with the rest from the Community Infrastructure Levy, the Lane Rental Surplus Fund, the city and district councils and the sale of reclaimed stone.

Getting out without the car

Chichester station has 202 parking spaces and a direct half-hourly train to London Victoria in 1 hour 36 minutes, with Gatwick Airport an hour away on the same service. Fares, season ticket prices and the full timetable are on the trains to London page.

Where to check before you set off

• National Highways road closure report for the next seven days on the A27, A3 and M27, night by night. This is the one to check before an evening drive, and on the evidence of this scheme it is more up to date than the scheme page. It lists closures only, not restrictions.
• National Highways South East maintenance schemes for the full phase dates and, where they exist, the signed diversions.
• Chichester City Council news for city-centre utility closures. This is where both the Market Avenue and the Stockbridge Road gas works were published, and it beat every other source to the October closure.
• Public Notice Portal for the statutory traffic orders covering the district, which give the exact extent of a closure and the diversion.
• West Sussex County Council roadworks and projects for local road schemes and the live roadworks map on one.network.
• Chichester OpenDigital project page for the city centre street works phases. This is the only place the street-by-street dates are published.
• Chichester District Council car parks for tariffs, spaces and MiPermit location codes.

More Chichester local information: house prices, trains to London, planning news, bin collection days and things to do in Chichester.