Dorset Council wants to keep Loscombe Crossroads on the A30 near Sherborne shut for good. Reopening would cost £1m to £15m. Survey closes 11 December.
Dorset Council is proposing to make the closure of Loscombe Crossroads on the A30 permanent. The junction, between Sherborne and Yeovil at Over Compton, has been shut to crossing traffic since October 2025.
People who live, work or drive nearby can tell the council how the closure has affected them. The survey closes on Friday 11 December 2026. The council announced it on 28 October.
Why it was closed
The council’s monitoring report, dated September 2026, sets out the record. Between 2015 and 2025:
- 11 injury collisions were recorded at the junction
- three of them were fatal, and four people died
- all the fatal collisions involved vehicles crossing the dual carriageway through the central reservation
The temporary closure followed a Prevention of Future Deaths report from the Senior Coroner for Dorset, issued after a fatal collision at the junction in December 2022, the council said.
The closure removed three movements: crossing the A30, turning right on to or off it, and U-turning at the junction. Left turns in and out still work.
What the monitoring found
The report covers about nine months after the closure. It records:
- no injury collisions at the junction
- no injury collisions on surrounding roads linked to the scheme
- no damage-only collisions reported in connection with the closure
- three near-miss reports, including a driver entering the dual carriageway the wrong way and a U-turn close to the main carriageway
The council says the period is not yet long enough to prove a statistically significant change in collisions. Average speeds on the A30 are now below 60mph, with 85th percentile speeds of 63 to 67mph at the points measured.
About 300 vehicle movements in a 12-hour weekday survey used the turns that are now banned. That is around 2% of the roughly 13,000 movements on the A30 over the same hours.
Those trips have moved elsewhere. The biggest change was on Underdown Hollow, which went from 982 to 1,375 vehicles over the 12-hour survey in March, an increase of 393 or 40%. Left turns into Marl Lane rose from 112 to 172, and into Old Compton Lane from 39 to 70.
The report says residents have reported more traffic and problems on Compton Road and at Babylon Hill roundabout. It found no evidence of significant operational problems there and says it will keep monitoring.
What reopening would cost
The council’s options summary looked at four ways forward:
| Option | Estimated cost |
|---|---|
| Permanent closure with improvements | £250,000 to £300,000 |
| Traffic signals | £1m to £2.5m |
| Roundabout | £2.5m to £5m |
| Staggered junction, moving Marl Lane | £10m to £15m |
Signals were judged the best way to restore crossing movements. They would also need the speed limit cut to 50mph and still would not allow U-turns. The review concludes that spending on that scale “would be difficult to justify compared with retaining the closure”.
What the permanent scheme would include
The recommended option keeps the central reservation shut and adds:
- traffic islands on Marl Lane and Old Compton Lane to make left-turn-only clearer
- a traffic regulation order banning right turns out of Marl Lane and Old Compton Lane
- wider U-turn restrictions along the A30
- short shared paths for people walking and cycling to the crossing point and nearby bus stops
The crossing for pedestrians and cyclists would stay uncontrolled. The review says a controlled crossing would be hard to justify because few people use it and no recorded collision has involved a pedestrian or cyclist.
It also flags a problem for some lorries over 7.5 tonnes travelling between Over Compton and Yeovil, which have no convenient alternative route. The council says it will weigh the effect on essential services and farm traffic before deciding.
The council’s project page says it is separately consulting on banning U-turns at other gaps along the A30, and is still working on average speed cameras for the Sherborne to Yeovil stretch.
What it means for you
- If you use the junction or the roads around it, the survey is your chance to put your own journeys on the record before 11 December. It asks how the closure has affected you and whether more safety measures are needed.
- The temporary order can only last 18 months, the council says, which is why a decision is needed. No date for the decision has been given.
- Nothing changes on the road yet. The current left-in, left-out layout stays while the council decides.
Jack Jeanes, the council’s cabinet member for place services, said: “We know this closure has had an impact on people living in Over Compton, Bradford Abbas and nearby communities. At the same time, we cannot ignore the history of serious collisions at this junction and the lives that have been lost.”
For other closures and works across the county this week, see our Dorset roadworks page.
Have your say