THE Government will use the Autumn Statement to set out plans for major road improvement projects, including the A1.

Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander said George Osborne's statement on December 3 would be used to give details of schemes to improve key routes.

Mr Alexander said the road network had been "really neglected" since the 1970s but "pretty chunky sums of money" had been set out for improvements.

He told The House magazine that the Government would set out detailed plans for routes of "major strategic importance".

"Our road network has been really neglected since the 1970s. You've had 30 or 40 years of nothing much happening," he said.

"We set out some pretty chunky sums of money for the roads, growing over the course of the next Parliament, and I want to fill out for people what we are going to do with that."

"The Chancellor has been talking about the 'northern powerhouse' and all that. I want to do something similar for some other parts of the country.

"There are six routes which we identified are ones that are of major strategic importance to the country. The A303 is one, the A1 north of Newcastle is another, the A47 is a third."

"We want to fill in some of those gaps, give some more detail, not just objectives but detailed plans for what we can do."

The AA's president Edmund King said: "We have been hearing lots recently about HS2 and even HS3 and it appeared that some people had forgotten that the vast majority of people and freight are carried on roads not rail.

"It is reassuring that the Treasury Chief Secretary is talking about 'chunky amounts' of cash for roads as large chunks are required to fill the potholes, remove the bottlenecks and improve the road infrastructure.

"It is absolutely right to highlight areas such as the South West, East Anglia and North East as places were road improvements are essential to improve their regional economies and road safety."