M25 clockwise shut between J22 and J23 for overnight roadworks

National Highways' own instruments flagged the closure that triggered this report: a planned carriageway shutdown on the M25 clockwise between junctions 22 and 23 for roadworks, listed as active until 05:30 today. That timing and status come directly from the estate's traffic monitoring feed, which the M25traffic.co.uk live page corroborates, recording the same closure — "M25 clockwise between J22 and J23 — Carriageway closed" — reported at 03:58 this morning, alongside a roughly parallel lane closure just up the road between J21A and J22, according to [2]. The wider picture on the M25 this morning is busier than the single closure suggests. The same live feed logged a full carriageway closure on the M40 link road from J1A northbound onto the M25 anticlockwise at J16, plus lane closures for roadworks on the anticlockwise carriageway between junctions 9 and 8, according to [2]. The page's own tally at the time put five accidents, four live roadworks and thirteen planned closures on the M25 network, though it does not break down which of those thirteen scheduled works is the J22–23 job itself, according to [2]. A National Highways bulletin in the same reporting set — dated 23 April 2021, so not from this morning — shows the kind of knock-on chaos even a single lane closure produces on this motorway: a vehicle recovery on the anticlockwise side between J16 and J15 shut the hard shoulder and lane 1, an accident between J24 and J25 closed a lane and built 30-minute delays, and congestion from that same collision backed traffic up as far as J22, according to [1]. It is included here only as an illustration of how the M25 behaves under closure, not as today's news — Wayne should not read those timestamps as current. Context for why this matters even for an overnight closure: Department for Transport counts at the J14 count point show the M25 has no genuinely quiet hour. The busiest slot for cars is the evening and for lorries it's late morning, but even the quietest counted hour, around midday, still carries heavy flow — the motorway runs close to capacity from breakfast through to teatime, according to [2]. That count point data doesn't cover the 05:30 window specifically, so it's unconfirmed whether traffic was building before this closure was due to lift, but the source's own framing is blunt: on this road, one closed lane produces a queue fast and clears slowly because there is no spare capacity to absorb it, according to [2]. Worth noting for the record: the M25traffic.co.uk source page is a live-updating aggregator carrying its own promotional commentary about why it refreshes every few minutes rather than a few times a day. That framing is the site's own pitch, not independent reporting, and is treated here only as description of the source, not as a claim to be repeated as fact. What to watch: whether the J22–23 closure actually lifted at 05:30 as scheduled, and whether the separate J21A–J22 lane closure or the M40 link closure at J16 caused tailbacks into the morning peak.