Roadworks expected to cause delays for five weeks

Roadworks in a Worcestershire village could add up to an hour to journeys between Hereford and Worcester for the next five weeks.

A section of the A4103 in Leigh Sinton, between Stocks Lane and Malvern Road, will be closed from Monday until 21 August.

Dave Fereday, the chair of Leigh and Bransford Parish Council, said there had been a lack of consultation and communication over the roadworks.

Worcestershire Council Council said the work was "unavoidable" and was being carried out by a housing developer.

Fereday said when a parish council meeting discussed the closure on 23 June, only one person knew about it, so his council wrote to everyone concerned to let them know.

He said he expected the next five weeks to be "quite a chaotic time".

"It's being treated like as if its a normal roadworks, but in fact it will make a big difference," he added.

Fereday was also concerned that people would ignore the road closed signs and try to get down smaller roads.

A spokesperson for Worcestershire County Council said: "The A4103 closure relates to housing developer-led works which require access to the highway and now need to proceed following over 12 months of delays.

"We recognise the diversion is lengthy and disruption unavoidable."

They said a signed road diversion would be in place with warnings where roads were unsuitable for large vehicles.

The road closure comes at the same time as roadworks on the A449 over the Malvern Hills, following two landslides, which has been closed since September last year.

The West Worcestershire MP Dame Harriett Baldwin said there had been a "shocking lack of communication" over these closures and others.

The county council said the original work to repair a 30m stretch of the A449 had been finished on time in April, but a second landslide had occurred several hundred metres away, just as the work was nearing completion.

As a result, it said work had to continue and it would be unsafe to reopen the road until it is complete.

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