People living in and around Clarence Road were trapped in their homes on Friday as the seemingly never-ending road works continue to make lives a misery for the east Leighton neighbourhood.
A five-day much publicised re-surfacing scheme looks set to roll into more than six weeks. For more than a week drivers were left with a rough stone-strewn surface to crawl over and raised manhole covers. On Friday contractors from Amey, working for Central Beds Council, blocked off Pennivale Close and part of Clarence Road to begin laying a new surface - only they forgot to tell anyone. Residents were trapped in their homes from 8am until late afternoon and a it is believed that a funeral procession had to be diverted away from the street.
One angry pensioner contacted the LBO after she was unable to leave her Pennivale Close home to take her disabled husband to the doctors.
Mrs Wendy Reid stormed: “This makes me so angry. They had no consideration for residents. Why couldn’t they have informed us that the road would be closed?
“My husband is severely disabled and walks with sticks. He needed to get to the doctors for an appointment and get a prescription filled but we found bollards blocking us into our turning.
“Eventually he cancelled his appointment because although the contractors would have got us out, they wouldn’t have been able to get us back to the house with the car. Later in the morning a man turned up and escorted me out so that I could get my husband, John’s perscription filled, but I had to park away from the house and walk back in.
“They just appeared out of the blue to do this work on Friday. It was just the sheer arrogance of them. They didn’t seem to care that residents were trapped in their homes all day.
“These roadworks began on November 5 and signs that were put up said it would take five days. Now we’re being told it will go on until the middle of December. It’s completely unacceptable.”
Amey spokesman Jon Shortland said: “I understand that the roadworks on Clarence Road have caused concern and been frustrating for some residents. We are committed to do all we can to improve the situation and I visited the site last week to work out how we can do this.
“We have listened to residents’ concerns and as a result we have now arranged for the road to be swept more regularly to rid it of loose stones. “The worst section of the road was resurfaced on Friday.
“We are sorry that we failed to undertake the two phases of work simultaneously – it is something we always seek to do, but could not do so in this case.
“The sum of money that could have been saved by undertaking the two phases together was minimal and relates to some temporary infill material and a number of road lines that were laid in the summer and have been superseded by the resurfacing works. For safety reasons we could not leave the road unlined, so this was an unfortunate but necessary cost, but we can assure you that this will not be borne by the taxpaying public.
“In terms of disruption, we know that these alterations really affect people and their journeys and we are sorry for any inconvenience caused. Works are planned to be completed in the first half of December, but we are looking at speeding them up.
We are working with Central Bedfordshire Council as hard as we possibly can to sort this out and in the meantime we apologise again for the inconvenience caused.”