Havering residents spend longer in traffic jams than the majority of England’s drivers, new figures have revealed.

Statistics released by the Department for Transport reveal how many seconds drivers will spend at a standstill for every mile they travel on an A road.

The data for Havering shows that for every mile on one of the main roads across the area a car will be delayed by 49.1 seconds.

So for a daily commute of five miles a driver should add around four minutes to the journey to get to work on time. Anyone travelling 20 miles can expect a delay of around 16 minutes.

The latest statistics, covering 2016, show there has been a rise of 1pc on the previous year.

And Havering’s drivers are delayed more than the majority of England.

The country overall has an average delay time of 45.9 seconds per mile, which was a 2.8pc increase on 2015.

While the DfT hasn’t yet released localised data for 2017, it has unveiled the England-wide numbers which show the average delay has increased once again to 46.4 seconds.

But the figures appear to show that traffic jams, one of Britain’s least popular national pastimes, are getting worse.

In 2016 motorists in Havering chugged along at 26.4mph, roughly the same speed as a galloping horse.

This was slower than the previous year by 1pc.

The news comes as work on the Ardleigh Green Bridge on the A127 enters its final phase, with the traffic flow moving onto the new part of the bridge in order for the older roads to be resurfaced.

The £32m project to widen lanes at the bridge and create a safer pedestrian footpath began in 2014, and was initially scheduled to be completed by May this year.

However, in November last year, engineers were forced to halt their demolition of the old bridge over unexpected “complexities” in the design.

And in June, Cllr Ramsey expressed his “extreme disappointment” when it was announced that TfL had scheduled a new completion date of Spring 2019 – a delay of almost two years to the original completion date.