Pennymead and Quarry Springs footway works run to the end of October, seven southern roads face 18 months of closures, and the A1019 is finished.

The two-year rebuild of the road between the station and the town centre is finished. What is left of the Harlow roadworks programme is a longer tail of smaller work: footway repairs across three neighbourhoods until the end of October, an 18-month programme of rolling closures on seven roads in the south of the town, and the occasional Sunday closure on the A1019 to finish off signals.

Essex County Council is the highway authority for every road in Harlow apart from the M11, which is National Highways. Harlow Council runs the car parks. Knowing which is which saves a lot of time when you want to report something.

What is happening now

Footway repairs, Pennymead and Quarry Springs, to end of October

A programme of footway maintenance began on 6 July 2026 and Essex Highways says it aims “to complete our improvement programme by the end of October 2026”. Phase one covers Pennymead and Quarry Springs. Phase two, dates still to be announced, covers Cooks Spinny.

The work levels surfaces and fixes kerbs ahead of a separate slurry sealing programme later. Traffic is mostly managed on a give and take arrangement with marshals on site, and clearways or no-parking restrictions apply on the street being worked on, so residents in those roads need to park elsewhere on their day. Essex Highways says people directly affected are contacted individually. (Essex Highways, Harlow footway repairs)

Seven roads in the south of the town, over 18 months

Essex County Council has published a programme of temporary closures, weight restriction changes and new clearways across the Harlow and Epping Forest districts, running in phases over an 18-month period from 22 January. The Harlow roads named are:

  • Little Pynchons
  • Pear Tree Mead
  • Parnall Road
  • Paringdon Road
  • Partridge Road
  • Tendring Road
  • Ployters Road

During each phase the affected road carries strict no waiting, no loading and no stopping restrictions, with diversions signed at each location. The exact dates for each road are published on one.network rather than in the order itself, so there is no single list to check months ahead. If you live on one of those seven, watch for the yellow notices going up on the lamp posts.

A1019 Allende Avenue, occasional Sunday closures

The A1019 between Burnt Mill Roundabout and Sainsbury’s Roundabout was closed from 09:00 on Sunday 9 August while traffic signal loops were cut into the new surface. Essex Highways has been closing that stretch on Sundays to finish the signals on the rebuilt corridor. These are single-day jobs with a signed diversion, but they take out the main link between the station and the town centre for a whole Sunday, so check before you set off if you are driving in.

The corridor that is finished

Harlow’s first Sustainable Transport Corridor is complete. It runs from a rebuilt junction at Burnt Mill along the A1019 to the town centre, and it took from March 2024 to 2026 to build, with Bouygues UK as principal contractor and Colas on site.

What Harlow got for it, according to Essex Highways:

  • A new southbound bus lane on Zelenskyy Avenue connecting Harlow Town station to Harlow bus station.
  • Road widening on First Avenue and Post Office Road, and a reduced central island on the Velizy Roundabout with the inner ring now surfaced.
  • New footway and cycleway along First Avenue from The Hides, and a no-dig footpath along Zelenskyy Avenue.
  • A rebuilt pedestrian crossing between the town centre and Harlow College.
  • A reconfigured Hammerskjold Road junction at the Sainsbury’s roundabout.
  • New signals, lighting, signage, surfacing and planting throughout.

It is the first of a planned group of corridors, and it is part of Homes England’s £172 million Housing Infrastructure Grant investment in Harlow, put in place to get transport built before the Harlow and Gilston Garden Town’s new homes arrive rather than after. The stated target is for 50% of journeys from existing Harlow communities to be made sustainably.

Two walking and cycling schemes finished alongside it. LCWIP 9, a £2 million east to west route from the Pinnacles industrial area to the town centre, was completed in October or November 2024. LCWIP 4 delivered three new crossings on the First Avenue corridor, a raised table at the Park Lane junction, a toucan crossing on the northern arm of the Howard Way roundabout and a parallel crossing over Momples Road, and was finished in summer 2026.

The routes that carry Harlow

How Harlow's main roads connect A simplified diagram of Harlow's road network. The M11 runs north to south along the eastern edge with junction 7 to the south east and junction 7a serving Gilden Way in the east. The A414 crosses the town east to west as Edinburgh Way and Elizabeth Way, linking junction 7 to Hertford in the west. The A1019 runs north to south from Burnt Mill roundabout and Harlow Town station through Zelenskyy Avenue and First Avenue to the town centre and Velizy roundabout. Old Harlow lies to the north east and Church Langley to the east near junction 7a. Everything in Harlow funnels onto the A414 or the M11 Schematic, not to scale. Shows the through routes that carry traffic when a local road closes. M11 to Cambridge to London A414 to Hertford Elizabeth Way Edinburgh Way A1019 Gilden Way Harlow Town station Burnt Mill rbt Sainsbury's rbt Velizy rbt town centre and bus station J7a J7 Old Harlow & Church Langley J7a opened in June 2022 to take east Harlow traffic straight to the M11 instead of through the town. J7 is the A414 junction.
Harlow's through routes. Local closures push traffic onto the A414 or the A1019, which is why a single Sunday closure is felt across the town.

Harlow’s road layout is unusual because it was designed rather than grown. The town sits inside a ring of fast roads with the neighbourhoods hanging off them, which means there are very few alternative routes when one of the main links shuts. That is worth remembering when a diversion adds twenty minutes to a five-minute journey.

M11 Junction 7a is the newest piece and the one that changed the most. It opened in June 2022, built by National Highways and Essex County Council, and it gives east Harlow a direct link onto the motorway via a widened three-lane Gilden Way, instead of routing that traffic through the town to Junction 7. If you are coming from Church Langley, Newhall or Old Harlow, J7a is almost always the right junction.

Parking

Harlow Council owns and maintains 14 car parks. They are grouped by area:

  • Town centre: Wych Elm
  • Town Park: Altham Grove, Burnt Mill Lock, First Avenue (Tanyard Place), School Lane, Showground (Fifth Avenue)
  • Old Harlow: Garden Terrace Road, Wayre Street
  • Bush Fair: Tawneys Road, Tilegate Road
  • The Stow: Minchen Road, The Stow
  • Mark Hall: Mill Hatch, River Way

Charges are shown on site rather than published as a single tariff list, so check the signs or the machine. The council’s car parks page has a map and the full postcode for each.

For rail travel, Harlow Town station has 649 spaces including 18 accessible bays, and Harlow Mill has 31. Cineworld at Queensgate on Edinburgh Way has free parking near the cinema; the Harvey Centre car park in the town centre charges.

Public transport when the roads are bad

If a closure is going to make driving painful, the alternatives are genuinely usable in Harlow, which is not true of every town this size.

  • Rail. Harlow Town runs every ten minutes or so to London Liverpool Street off-peak, 31 minutes at best. Full times and fares are in our guide to Harlow trains to London.
  • Bus. Harlow bus station is in the town centre, and the new southbound bus lane on the A1019 links it directly to Harlow Town station.
  • Walking and cycling. The LCWIP 9 route from the Pinnacles to the town centre and the rebuilt A1019 corridor are both segregated for most of their length.

One live accessibility warning. National Rail lists the lifts between the booking hall and the overbridge at Harlow Town station as out of order. Step-free access to the platforms is not affected, but if you need that lift, check the station page or book Passenger Assistance first.

How to check before you travel

Roadworks change at short notice and no page can stay current between updates. These are the live sources:

We update this page as Essex Highways publishes new Harlow schemes.

Sources

Closures and dates change at short notice. Checked on 10 August 2026. Always confirm on one.network or the Essex Highways live map before you travel.

More Harlow local information: house prices, trains to London, planning news and things to do in Harlow.