One of Worcester’s major roads will suffer 12 weeks of disruption to prevent future flooding of the road.

New Road, a key route linking the city centre with St John's, and providing access to Worcestershire County Cricket Club’s ground, will be raised by 15 inches for nearly 200 metres to prevent flooding.

Councillors on County Hall’s Planning and Regulatory Committee agreed to the measure, saying they think the cost outweighs the benefits.

The road surface will be raised by up to 38 centimetre, nearly 15 inches, for a stretch of the three-lane one-way road running from just outside the Premier Inn hotel immediately west of Worcester Bridge, to 20 metres west of the cricket ground, a distance of 190 metres.

A box culvert will be constructed under the road surface to carry away flood water.

Work will start in January and will continue for an anticipated 12 weeks, and is, according to the application to the committee, timed to avoid the cricket season.

During the nearly three months period, at least one lane of the road will be open, and access will be maintained to the cricket ground, Cripplegate Park and the King’s School Worcester’s playing fields, although “intermittent closures may be required.”

The county’s Highways department says the work is necessary because New Road is “a key arterial route through Worcester [and has] a history of flooding events.”

The application cited closures of the road due to flooding for four days in 2007 and eight days in 2014, and that this work would keep the road open during floods of similar severity.

The county said: “The traffic-based economic benefits of the scheme would amount to £7.497 million, while the wider economic benefits would amount to £2.892m.”

But while the committee approved the scheme, both members who represent Worcester areas; Councillor Pat Agar (Labour & Co-operative, Nunnery) and Paul Denham (Labour & Co-operative, Rainbow Hill) voted against the plan.

Cllr Denham said: “We were not convinced by the economic arguments. The road has been closed by flooding for 12 days over the last 10, nearly 11 years.

“The disruption of 12 week’s work on the road would seem to outweigh the disruption of 12 days every 11 years, and it doesn’t look like anybody’s looked at the economic impact on the city of the disruption caused by the work.”

Cllr Denham is also very concerned by the necessity to chop down seven mature trees along the road, to allow the work to happen.

He said: “The trees form an avenue along the road, and according to the city council’s Conservation Areas Advisory Committee they date back to 1920.”

The proposals say that a similar number of trees will be replaced, but inside Cripplegate Park, and not along the road.

Cllr Denham said: “Both the advisory committee and the county ecologists say that won’t properly replace the trees and want new trees planted in the same place as the ones to be removed. But that’s not going to happen.”

Work on the scheme is due to start in January.