CAMPAIGNERS for a fully dualled A11 will have to wait until March to find out if there will be a public inquiry into completing the “missing link” between Norwich and London, highways officials said yesterday.

CAMPAIGNERS for a fully dualled A11 will have to wait until March

to find out if there will be a

public inquiry into completing the “missing link” between Norwich and London, highways officials said yesterday.

Dozens of people descended on Thetford's Carnegie Room for the final exhibition displaying computer animations, drawings and draft orders of the upgrade of the trunk road between Barton Mills and Thetford.

But officials from the Highways

Agency yesterday said that they would not know until the end of a 13-week public consultation period whether a public inquiry would take place.

The £127m dualling scheme is currently expected to start at the end of 2010 and be completed by early 2013 after transport minister Geoff Hoon brought the project forward 18 months ahead of schedule.

But work on the nine-mile stretch could start earlier and be open to traffic in autumn 2012, if a public inquiry was not required.

Roger Hawkins, project manager for the Highways Agency, said it was difficult to predict whether the scheme would have to go before an independent inspector. He added that Geoff Hoon would make a decision within a month of the consultation process closing on February 19.

“It is quite a simple scheme given that there are a small number of landowners involved - mainly the Elveden Estate, Forestry Commission and Crown Estate - and it is completing the missing link. People are generally very supportive of the scheme,” he said.

People can write in with their support or objections by writing to the A11 Fiveways to Thetford Improvement Team, Highways Agency, Woodlands, Manton Lane, Bedford, MK41 7LW or emailing a11fivewaystothetfordimprovement@highways.gsi.gov.uk.