Drivers face a summer of roadworks on the edge of both Ipswich and Felixstowe as improvements take place to cope with more trucks going to and from the country’s top container port.

Work costing around �7 million will take place at the dock spur roundabout and Copdock interchange.

The dock spur on the A14 is one of the county’s most notorious accident blackspots, where many lorries have been involved in roll-over crashes over the years – including a fatal incident when a car driver was killed as a truck flipped onto his vehicle.

Full details of the work have still not been announced but Felixstowe highways advisory committee was told the scheme would involve traffic lights being put in place and also re-alignment of the carriageways to create easier access in and out of the town.

At busy times, long tailbacks build up on the Walton by-pass Candlet Road waiting to leave Felixstowe as streams of traffic come from Ipswich towards the port.

A spokeswoman for the Highways Agency said: “The Highways Agency is hoping to start work on improvements to the Copdock and dockspur interchanges on the A14 in early summer.

“Further details will be announced in due course.”

The project – scheduled to take several months to complete and which will cause disruption at peak times – is needed to cope with the expansion of Felixstowe port over the next 15 years.

Port owners Hutchison Whampoa will pay for both schemes as part of the approval for their new deepwater berths.

The first phase of the expansion – two new berths for the world’s biggest container ships – is set to open this year, and once all the work on the extension is complete, one million more lorries a year, about 2,700 a day, will be travelling on the A14 on the Felixstowe peninsula.

The port’s capacity will increase by 1.5 million standard-sized boxes a year – two thirds of which will travel by road with the remaining third going by rail.