I have been working with residents to press SGN to postpone the major gas works involving weeks of road closures during this challenging time as we deal with coronavirus, in order to leave the roads open for deliveries as a priority. I wrote to SGN yesterday on this matter and received a reply today:

Good afternoon

I hope you are all keeping well.

Apologies for our slow response to the original enquiry, as I’m sure you will understand that COVID-19 has created much uncertainty for SGN.  Advice and guidance for the utility and construction industry has been changing daily.

Following the UK Government’s latest instructions to further protect communities against the spread of coronavirus, we are only continuing with safety-critical and emergency work from this week. This means we will temporarily suspend our project to replace the gas pipes on Tennyson and Chase Lane.  

Apologies for any confusion caused by our contractors visiting residents recently,  instructions to contractors have been changing,  just two weeks ago some councils were keen for us to push forward with outstanding mandatory work whilst the road network is quiet.  For some of our larger town centre projects getting this work completed whilst there is a lock down makes sense, however Tennyson/Chase Lane should not have been included in this package for obvious reasons.  

Please can I reassure you that we’ll write to you again when we’re able to restart work on Chase and Tennysons Lane.   We all agree this will be a  challenging project as access and diversions are an issue for residents, we are keen to work with you and residents to ensure its as painless as possible.   At this current time I cannot say when works will be re-planned but I have asked the planning team and contractors to keep me informed.

I would be so grateful if you could pass this message on to residents through your network, working from home I don’t have the capacity to send letters out to residents until I’m able to visit one of our depots.