Pipes work to close road through Shropshire villages

The B4371, linking Church Stretton with Much Wenlock and the West Midlands, will close twice in the coming month for a total of three weeks as the Severn Trent Water lays four kilometres of new pipe in the area.

The work comes on top of five months of work on the B4368, which runs in parallel to the south, linking Craven Arms and Ludlow to Bridgnorth, Much Wenlock and the West Midlands. A daytime road closure is expected as part of those works during the school half term holidays in May.

The news of closures on the B4371 sparked fears of a further loss of trade for local businesses, already affected by two weeks of road re-surfacing in January.

Severn Trent officials pledged to minimise disruption and are holding a drop-in session for concerned residents along the road, which runs through Hope Bowdler, Wall-Under-Heywood and Longville, at Rushbury Village Hall today from 4pm to 7pm. The first road closure will be for two weeks from March 24 from The Plough Inn to Darby Lane, the second for one week from April 7 from Hillside View to Darby Lane.

Sally Lea, proprietor at Shropshire Country Brides in Longville, claimed it would discourage people coming from Shrewsbury, Ludlow and Church Stretton. She said: "It does affect us. We've got traffic lights all the time. We've had two weeks of it already this year and we lost customers last time on this. They book appointments but when they come to a closed road or see it's closed in the news they just cancel or don't turn up."

Severn Trent Water programme engineer, Dave Kiernan, said: "Unfortunately, the water pipes in the Wall under Heywood area have grown old and they're now prone to bursts. To help prevent this from happening in the future, we're investing £500,000 to install more than four kilometres of new water pipes in the area.

"We'll be starting work in March and unfortunately, there will need to be two road closures in the area for us to undertake the work safely. "