Road closure extended - compensation call

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Sat 21st Aug 2004

Holt County Councillor Terry Chivers has called for compensation for businesses in Holt after learning the main road leading to the village is to remain closed for an extra week.

Business in Holt are open as usual, but are losing trade because of the over-run on the council's road maintenance.

Roadwork's including drainage, resurfacing etc have been taking place between the Tollgate and Forewords common for the past four or five weeks causing traffic to be diverted via Trowbridge to reach Melksham causing local passing trade to be lost by the two local pubs and village shop.

Now Terry has been informed by Wiltshire County Council that work is to take an extra week because the machine that will be used to resurface the road being used on a contract in Potterne near Devizes.

Terry said, "I welcome the fact that the work is being done we have waited along time for this work to be carried out the road was in a very bad state of repair. But I am concerned that the work is to over run its time. The contractor must have known their was to be a problem with the machine before the work started I am told by the County Council that it is the only one of its kind in the County. They must have known before the work started. The two local pubs have suffered and I understand that the award wining Tollgate has suffered with a loss of Bed and Breakfast bookings.

Local District Councillor Duncan Hames has also backed the call for compensation.

Duncan said, "This is the first summer for the new landlords at the Ham Tree and this is clearly causing them to suffer the loss of passing daytime trade. The village shop has suffered too. If it is the fault of the contractor maybe he should consider some kind of compensation even if it is a small token amount."

"If the County Council had clauses like that in its contracts, then perhaps other areas would not suffer in the same way in future." added Cllr Hames.