Ref. 12469/2FAMILIES living in the High Street in Pewsey were appalled when a gang of workmen arrived to excavate the road at 2am.

It wasn't just the rude awakening which stunned residents, but the fact that the road had been resurfaced just days before, following years of campaigning by the parish council.

The 2am excavation by Wessex Water last Wednesday was outside the home of parish councillor Harriet Fear-Davies, who was far from amused to be awakened by the din of a disc cutter and pneumatic drill.

She said the contractors made no attempt to keep the noise down.

"I went out and asked them what they were doing at that time of the night and they said they had to do the job at that time to avoid disrupting the traffic," she said.

"But it was clearly not an emergency job.

"All they were doing was replacing a manhole cover from what we have been able to find out."

"I got on to a Kennet District Council environmental health officer who contacted Wessex Water.

"They just said that as they had started the job the road was unsafe and they had to finish it off."

Many of Coun Fear-Davies' neighbours were also flabbergasted at the sudden awakening.

Simon Lucas said he was fast asleep when the workmen started using a disc cutter to slice through the road surface.

Mr Lucas said: "I was woken up by the sound of the angle grinder cutting into the asphalt."

When he saw that it was Wessex Water contractors at work he called an emergency line to be told there was no record of any emergency work required in Pewsey.

Wessex Water told the Gazette it had been told by Wiltshire County Council that the work had to be done at that time to avoid disrupting traffic.

But this claim has since been denied by officers at County Hall.

A spokeswoman for the water utility said: "We needed to do some urgent work on one of the services in Pewsey High Street that involved putting a TV camera down the sewers to investigate a problem.

"The road had been resurfaced recently and the asphalt was over one of our manholes so workmen were unable to put the camera in place.

"Obviously we needed urgent access to the sewer and we contacted the council for authority to do the dig.

"It said that as it was the High Street we could not do it during the day and had to do it at night.

"We were the authority to do the work and we were told it had to be done at night at the time the contractors turned up."

But a Wiltshire County Council spokesman said that while Wessex Water was given authority to carry out the work it was "most certainly not" advised to carry it out in the early hours of the morning.

A county council spokesman said: "Unless the work was very, very urgent there is no way we would tell them or authorise them to do that sort of job in the middle of the night.

"As far as this council is concerned we did not tell them to do the work in the middle of the night."

Parish council chairman Alex Carder was incensed that the new road surface had been dug up within days of being laid especially after the long campaign by the council to get the High Street resurfaced.

He said: "I am absolutely appalled not only to hear the road was dug up within days of being resurfaced but to hear that it was done at 2am in a residential area."

Pewsey Parish Council had become increasingly concerned about safety on the High Street in recent years.

The road surface had become uneven with potholes and poor camber.

Councillors campaigned untiringly to get the road resurfaced, and had finally seen the work complete.