Missing drain cover forces two lane closures on Millbrook Road causing traffic to tailback to M27 and A35

Emergency repairs to a collapsed drain cover in Millbrook Road West have closed two lanes which has backed up thousands of cars all the way to the A35 at Ashurst in the New Forest and A336 in Totton.

But the lanes were closed at around midnight, according to Southampton City Council's highways team, leaving motorists clueless as to why the repairs took more than 12 hours to begin.

Gill Gould, partner at city PR firm Carswell Gould, spent two and a half hours driving to work in the city from Bashley in the New Forest.

She said: “It's been awful; thousands of cars have just been sitting still. If this was an emergency problem it should have been dealt with as soon as it happened. We would immediately be available if our clients had an emergency, so why should it be any different on the roads?”

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Stephen Graham, 27, usually takes less than 10 minutes to drive to work for a logistics company based near Dock Gate 20, but saw the journey take more than 40 minutes this morning.

He said: “I've heard it was a collapsed drain cover that happened last night and I find it ridiculous this was not sorted out before the morning rush hour to avoid all this chaos.”

And motorists and residents have been venting their anger to the Daily Echo via Facebook and Twitter.

On Facebook, Mark Hamilton Anderson said: “It's shocking. Southampton is growing as a city and that's great but the roads and traffic organisation and the guys paid to organise these things need to grow and evolve to deal with it, I think we will lose the cruise ships eventually to city's that can cope with the traffic and sadly it will serve us right.”

Joy Elvidge added: “They were doing this at 6pm last night when I went past. Have they not finished it yet?”

It followed confusion over the cause of the incident, with the highways team initially tweeting last night a drain cover was 'missing', before earlier this morning changing it to 'collapsed', although it is understood the latter is correct.

The city council has said their highways partners Balfour Beatty and Southern Water are both on site carrying out repairs.

A Southern Water spokesman said: "This work has to be carried out to make the road safe.

"We understand motorists’ frustration and our repair team is at the scene."

After being at the scene for around an hour, the contractors repaired the drain and installed a new cover by around 1pm.

Bus services were also affected, with Bluestar warning customers to expect long delays on all Totton services.