St Botolph's Circus, Colchester

Introduction

St Botolph’s Circus is situated to the south of Colchester Town Centre on the A134 Southway at its junction with St Botolph’s Street, Mersea Road and Magdalen Street.

Colchester Town railway station is also situated just off the roundabout.

The junction is partially signalised and has a complex arrangement, particularly on the north side, where vehicles have to cross the roundabout approach lanes on St Botolph’s Street to gain access to the Britannia Way car park.

The Magistrates' Court car park and the railway accessible-parking bays are directly off the roundabout which leads to further safety issues for both drivers and pedestrians.

Regeneration of St Botolph's Circus 

As a crucial gateway into the city centre and a meeting point for different forms of transport, the regeneration of St Botolph’s Circus is a vital part of Colchester’s developing City Centre Masterplan.

While the Masterplan sets out the vision for the city centre a successful Government Levelling Up Fund bid has enabled the St Botolph’s proposals to be brought forward at this stage. 

The successful bid enables us to focus on St Botolph’s itself, but in doing so it will also lay the foundation for future improvements to the wider area, such as improving the area as a transport interchange. The funding bid sets out the need to create a new gateway into the city centre which supports regeneration, stimulates business growth and improves health and wellbeing through:

Consultation history

In 2019, recognising the need for improvements at St Botolph’s, we undertook a consultation on a re-design of the roundabout.

This proposed an increase in capacity for more vehicles, with new crossing points created and the underpasses infilled to improve safety.

While there was support for some elements, it was felt the lack of focus on walking and cycling did not adequately improve connectivity. You also told us that the proposal did not go far enough to improve the look and feel of the area or create the welcoming gateway the city needs. Additionally, the design did not adequately provide safety features, highlighting that safety, particularly for cyclists is poor.

In June/July 2023 a revised 'crossroads design' was consulted on as part of the City Centre Masterplan consultation. Over 530 residents, groups and businesses took the time to complete the St Botolph’s element of the consultation and the feedback provided both to this and the previous consultation has been useful in helping us to further shape the plans.

Through this, you told us that you supported improvements to the look and feel of the area, the removal of the subways and better accessibility. However, you had concerns about the impact on traffic and traffic movement, the layout of crossing points, and the impact of construction 

Our consultation report setting out what you told us can be seen in the documents section of our webpage. Here you will also find our ‘Promoters Response’ which covers questions which came up during the consultation in more detail, split across a number of themes.

Preliminary design

Following the feedback received from the public consultation, our design has been updated to address the points raised. Most significantly, the proposed cross-road layout has now been replaced with a smaller roundabout design.

The below artist's impressions and 'fly-through' video are based on our preliminary design and show a glimpse of what the future of St Botolph’s Circus will look like.

We are now working to develop this design in more detail.