Ahead of the arrival of over 100 of the world's best cyclists, Dorset Council has been carrying out a programme of road maintenance to ensure they are safe for competitors.

The existing 'Dorset Road Fix' programme, carried out by Dorset Highways' maintenance team, has seen 96 miles of road resurfaced across the county.

This includes nine sites that have been brought forward in the council's resurfacing programme in order to allow work to be completed ahead of the Tour of Britain.

The prestigious cycle race will begin its seventh stage in West Bay on Saturday, September 10 and will pass through Dorchester, West Lulworth and Corfe Castle, before heading inland towards Wareham, Milton Abbas and Wimborne Minster before ending in Ferndown

Two sites were surfaced in July with a further seven repaired this month, including the finishing stretch of the Stage 7 route being resurfaced to conclude the works – with Victoria Road in Ferndown closed overnight for seven nights from 18 August for this work to be completed.

Hanson Contracting, a strategic partner of Dorset Highways and one of the official sponsors of the stage, has been carrying out the work.

Hanson have committed to ambitious net-zero targets and will be using both low energy asphalt and low carbon bio binders at the finishing straight. They will also be using sustainably sourced Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil to power the equipment to make and lay the asphalt.

Cllr Ray Bryan, Portfolio Holder for Highways, Travel and Environment, said: “Through our strategic partnership with Hanson, we are able to work closely together to minimise the impact of our construction activity on the environment.

“We are committed to embedding our climate and ecological emergency response work across all of our services, and our strong policy of recycling planings back into our roads as well as using low energy asphalt as standard throughout our resurfacing sites is a great example of this.”

Ian Price, Managing Director of Hanson Contracting, added: “We pride ourselves on finding innovative solutions to reduce the carbon footprint during the production of our aggregates, as well as continually innovating to meet net zero carbon ambitions.”

Last month, Hanson Contracting announced it had become one of the official sponsors of Stage Seven of the Tour of Britain, taking place in Dorset.

Dorset will welcome the Tour of Britain for the first time in modern race history. The historic county will host the penultimate stage of the race on Saturday 10 September, as the eight-stage event works its way down from Aberdeenshire to the Isle of Wight.