A six-week road closure to allow gas pipe upgrades is causing some chaos in Okehampton.

People living on the east side and driving into town face at least a ten-mile journey to get back home, as the return diversion avoiding closed East Street sends traffic out to Sourton Cross and back via the A30.

Meanwhile those living in town wanting to get to Okehampton Medical Centre, are facing that same ten-mile journey by road to reach the surgery. unless they walk.

Taxi driver David Weekes regularly takes less mobile people to appointments at Okehampton Medical Centre. The price of the journey has rocketed because he has to drive the long way round.

David questions why a two-way diversion could not have been worked out through town.

He said: “A pick up at the taxi rank [close to Okehampton’s supermarkets] means going back to Sourton Cross and up the dual carriageway taking the exit by the BP Garage and back to the medical centre. This makes the fare £16 rather than £6.

“It is ridiculous. If they had any sense, they would open up the junction at NorthStreet which is buses only. That way they way they would have another way to get through the town.”

He said that he “did appreciate that the work has got to be done, but added: “It has really cost my business badly. It was affect the shops because people aren’t coming into town or through it because they know what is going on. They are going to Launceston or Exeter instead.”

Paul Gillard, who lives on the Meldon Fields estate on the east side of Okehampton says he did not know about the planned roadworks along East Street until the work started on Monday (January 5).

Travelling into town earlier this week to shop, he followed the diversion along the reversed section of Crediton Road then along Northfield Road, North Street, Fore Street to reach the car park beside Simmons Park. “It was only then that I realised, how can I get out?” The answer, he discovered, was a long detour back via Sourton Cross and the A30.

He said there had been a “lack of information”. “It is really poor,” he said. “This is the worst traffic organisation I have ever come across in Okehampton.”

Meanwhile Okehampton Police announced they will conduct extra monitoring along lower Crediton Road after some vehicles drove through ‘no entry signs’ entering Crediton Road, where the direction of traffic had been reversed, on the first two days of the closure (January 5-8).

As a result, Wales and West Utilities, which is carrying out the roadworks to replace gas pipes, has extended the length of the road block slightly to prevent vehicles entering Crediton Road from East Street.

Vehicles will no longer be able to access Mill Road directly from Crediton Road and will instead need to follow the diversion down Northfield Road, onto North Street before turning left onto East Street to access Mill Road from the west.

Anyone travelling from the west will still need to use the planned diversion route along the B3260, onto the A386, then onto the A30, before rejoining the B3260 on the east side of town.

The roadworks on East Street are due to continue well into February. Wales and West Utilities, the gasworks contractor, are replacing metal pipes with plastic ones and reconnecting up pipes to properties along East Street.

The company says the work is crucial to ensure the long-term delivery of the gas supply to households.