HOTELIERS and guest house owners in a Great Yarmouth street fear their busiest trading period is going to be affected for the second year running by a nearby building compund.

HOTELIERS and guest house owners in a Great Yarmouth street fear their busiest trading period is going to be affected for the second year running by a nearby building compund.

Tourist traders in Wellesley Road thought the noise disturbance from diggers at the site near Beach Road car park had ended for good in October when workmen employed on the borough council's SHARP regeneration project left.

But in March, the clanging and banging resumed when Norfolk County Council workmen arrived to start work on a project to upgrade traffic lights in Euston Road.

Now Roger Eagle and Dawn Bradley, who run the Chatsworth Hotel and Spindrift guest house respectively, fear they could lose trade during a tourist season made all the more important by the economic downturn.

Mr Eagle, 59, who has run the hotel for 30 years, said already guests had been complaining their rooms were overlooking the compound and asked to be moved.

“When you get a hotel room as a holidaymaker what is the first thing you look for? It is the view out of the window. My guests will look out of the window to see what view they have got and invariably they will look and see a building site.”

Half the rooms are at the back of the hotel where the compound is and Mr Chatsworth said the work started as early as 7am, which he could not understand, when most building sites usually opened at 8am.

“I am thinking about sending a bill to the council for the loss of earnings from the rooms I cannot let. If you are going away on holiday you don't want a building site right under your bedroom window,” Mr Eagle added.

Mrs Bradley understood Mr Eagle's concerns although she said her guest house was well insulated against the noise.

“The tourist season's just started and we want to make the best of it now that we are trying to keep the business going during the credit crunch, but unfortunately the council don't seem to be thinking about that,” she said.

In June last year, Mr Eagle spoke to the Mercury about noise disturbance from the SHARP project- a regeneration scheme bring back neglected and empty properties in Wellesley Road, Paget Road and Sandown Road. He said at that time the contractors were arriving even earlier at 6.30am.

County Council spokesman John Birchall confirmed workmen were carrying out improvements to the traffic lights in Euston Road.

The scheme is due to last a couple of months.