Video : One-way system along Castlegate begins - and it will last until June

A one-way system on one of Newark’s busiest roads began this morning – with several motorists fearing heavy delays in the town.

As part of Severn Trent’s £60m scheme to improve the water and sewerage system, Castlegate is open only to southbound traffic between the Beastmarket Hill roundabout and the bus station on Lombard Street, until June.

It is the most significant phase so far of Severn Trent’s scheme.

A free shuttle bus service is running around the town centre, with stops at Lombard Street, London Road, Sherwood Avenue, Appletongate, Newark Northgate Station, Lincoln Street, Northgate, The Wharf and Castlegate. It is being provided to help minimise disruption to existing bus services.

Although the system has been introduced on a week when many Nottinghamshire schools have their half-term break, several people the Advertiser spoke to this morning feared that it would add to the ongoing traffic issues in the town.

Jenny Samuels, who lives in Newark, runs a cleaning business with clients in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.

She fears that she may lose trade if she cannot reach houses because of delays.

“I am a little bit worried about losing clients if we cannot turn up,” she said.

“I have been through Castlegate twice today. It wasn’t bad the first time, at 8am, but at midday it took my between 10 and 15 minutes to get through it.

“I am aware that these works are desperately needed but there are so many around the town.

“We never used to have this much traffic and there has been so much going through Newark these last few years.

“You wonder how the emergency services are going to deal with it when they need to get somewhere, because of all the work.”

Truck driver Mr Walter McDowell, who lives on Northgate, works a night shift. He said that even before the Castlegate works began he left an hour earlier than his regular 4.30pm departure to reach Yearsley Logistics, Bilsthorpe, from where he drives the vehicles.

“When the schools return next week it will really clog the town,” he said.

“And what’s going to happen when traffic comes up from the bypass? It’s going to happen because it seems that there are accidents once a week on the A46 and A1.

“But we are British – so we’ll have the old stoic attitude and grin and bear it.”

Jackie Rylance, who lives on the Winthorpe Road Estate in Newark, has changed her working hours at a pharmacy in Balderton due to the works.

“Previously I used to catch the 8.10am bus which would taken me all the way through to Balderton,” she said.

“But now I can't do that so I will be taking the 7.40am – which means I’ll be working 8.30am to 5pm on Mondays instead of 9am to 5pm, and I’ll start half-an-hour earlier for the rest of the week, too.

“This morning when I was dropped off at The Wharf there was no shuttle bus there, so I walked to the bus station and waited for a service.”

'Something that has got to be done'

Mrs Elaine Pownall, who works at Feeling Peckish, on Castlegate, said that while there would be problems she understood why the work had to be completed.

“It’s something that has got to be done,” she said. “It won’t affect us as a business but it will affect Newark as a whole.

“From 4pm onwards – sometimes from 3.30pm – Newark seems to be in utter chaos.

“But it’s Severn Trent’s job to do it, so they just have to get on with it.”

A bus user, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “If there were heavy storms and the drains couldn’t cope there would be problems, so this work has to be done.”

Some people questioned why the work could not be carried out exclusively at night, but Severn Trent said that it would be impossible to cover the machinery every day and make the area safe, and it did not want to noisy and disruptive to nearby residents.

The company had previously said that the one-way closure and bus shuttle services had prevented the road being closed completely.

Elsewhere, concrete barriers have been put up outside Newark College and part of Sherwood Avenue temporarily re-modelled. There is currently only access to Bede House Lane from Barnbygate.

A Severn Trent spokesman said: "As part our sewer improvements on Beacon Hill Road, we’re going to start work that involves working on Friary Road.

"So we can keep traffic moving, and to avoid having to close a lane of traffic on Friary Road, we’ve made some changes to the Friary Road and Beacon Hill junction.

“These changes still allow for two-way traffic and mean we can keep Friary Road open, helping minimise disruption. To do this safely, we’ve closed Bede House Lane at the junction with Friary Road, which will have less of an impact on through traffic.

“We’ve planned this section of work closely with Nottinghamshire County Council highways department, to run alongside the one-way system, so it doesn’t cause too much of an inconvenience.

"We want to say thank you to everyone in the town for their continued patience as we work, and we’ll be completing our work and getting everything back to normal as soon as we can.”