The network will be upgraded over a five-year period and part-funded by vehicle excise duty

A multibillion government plan to build hundreds of miles of roads will be announced in the budget, The Times has learnt.

Philip Hammond is expected to outline a programme to upgrade and maintain motorways and key A-roads over a five-year period by ring-fencing vehicle excise duty. It is intended to tackle serious bottlenecks while creating extra capacity on the network.

Highways England is expecting funding of between £23 billion and £28 billion from 2020 to 2025. It will be one of the biggest single upgrades of the network since the expansion of the first motorways in the Sixties and Seventies.

The upgrade will be part-financed through a dedicated “roads fund”, a pot created by using the £6 billion a year raised through vehicle excise duty.