Council apologises for keeping residents awake with all-night roadworks in Milton Keynes

People living near the V10 at Caldecote and Bow Brickhill have lost sleep by roadworks going on between 8pm and 6am since last Friday.

Council contractors Ringway are working on a project, due to finish tomorrow, to resurface a stretch of the road.

Their after-dark working hours have proved a king-size headache for residents, who have been kept awake by the noisy machinery.

"The noise was totally unacceptable and the crashing of rocks and metal, together with the trucks and workmen shouting has stopped me sleeping even with all the windows closed," Caldecote resident Tony Fabrizio told the Citizen yesterday.

Today a spokesperson for MK Council said: “We’re sorry that we were unable to contact all affected residents before the overnight works began. We’ll be reviewing our process to ensure that this situation is avoided in the future when coordinating with other work sites.”

She added: “We appreciate that roadworks can be noisy so we always look at how we can avoid this and minimise disruption for residents.”

“Overnight roadworks take place only if it is absolutely essential and with good reason – on this occasion we were aware that Anglian Water would be carrying out important work in the same area during the day with a diversion route for vehicles. So we coordinated our work schedule to fit around theirs so that we work on their diversion route at night, and they work on ours throughout the day.

"We were unable to use the nearby A5 as a diversion route as this is a Highways England road and we would need their permission which can take up to three months and is not guaranteed.

“Another benefit of doing these works at night, is that the hot rolled asphalt used to resurface the road can cool down quicker so the road can be reopened to traffic much earlier.

"During lockdown we have been unable to carry out large scale resurfacing works due to the Covid-19 restrictions and also, material supplies were affected. But we have since pushed ahead with our extensive resurfacing programme for large sections of the grid roads to keep the network maintained and traffic moving.

"We apologise for the inconvenience that this has caused and hope that you will bear with us while we carry out essential works on the network.”