TO Southampton City Council: Further to recent reports in the press regarding the traffic chaos in Southampton perhaps you would explain why your officials have now granted Southern Water permission to dig a trench from St Anne’s Road in Woolston across the junction with Portsmouth Road and on into Station Road running until February 21, and in order to do this, set up yet another set of temporary traffic lights across that junction and close Station Road?

This will inevitably add to the delays already inflicted on the users of Portsmouth Road by the dubious scheme to remove the roundabout on the opposite side of Itchen Bridge.

What I find particularly galling is that neither of these road works are urgent or emergency repairs, if even necessary at all, and therefore could at the very least have been phased to minimise disruption.

With regard to the Southern Water roadworks,why does the water main have to be replaced now when the development is still in the early stages of construction? Surely it could be postponed until the other road works have been completed?

IAN DAVIES, Southampton.