A BUSY stretch of road on Northgate Street will be closed for five weeks from Monday as work continues on a multi-million flood alleviation scheme. Anglia Water has been on site since September as part of a £4.

A BUSY stretch of road on Northgate Street will be closed for five weeks from Monday as work continues on a multi-million flood alleviation scheme.

Anglia Water has been on site since September as part of a £4.7m scheme to improve the sewer network in the Northgate Street area after it was devastated by flooding in September 2006.

On Monday the section of road between Beaconsfield Road and the traffic lights at Lawn Avenue will close so work could begin on installing a larger sewer.

The scheme includes a new pumping station, which acts as an underground storage tank that can hold up to 850 cubic metres of water, a new sewer 1500mm in diameter - with the average sewer being 350mm in size.

The new sewer will run from the junction with Apollo Walk about 300metres up Northgate Street towards the hospital ground then discharge into the storage tank under the car park at the front of Northgate St Andrews First School. From there water will be pumped a further 490metres up Northgate Street, cross under Lawn Avenue and head down Tar Works Road to discharge at Anglian Water's existing New Tar Works pumping station.

Work has already started on sites including Northgate Hospital where shafts have been dug in order for a tunnelling machine to be lowered into the ground and tunnel the new sewer.

The sewer in the section of road between Beaconsfield Road and the junction with Lawn Avenue cannot be installed with a tunnelling machine due to existing pipes and electric cables already in the ground so is being completed via an open and cut method.

Access to properties will be maintained at all times and businesses will be open as usual.

The work is expected to take five weeks.