A COUNCIL blunder led traders to fear Haltwhistle’s shopping centre would be cut off to traffic during a week of roadworks.

The roadworks got under way on Monday – with Main Street closed to traffic each day this week from its junction with Fair Hill to Black Bull Lane – between 8am and 4.30pm.

The closure allowed Northern Gas Networks to carry out underground improvements to gas services, before Northumberland County Council resurfaced the road.

But a wrongly placed road sign, which went up in advance of work, led some people to believe that the closure would affect both Main Street and Westgate, where many of Haltwhistle’s shops are located.

And despite Northumberland County Council’s decision last month to reinstate public notices in the Hexham Courant – a notice advertising the scheme appeared in the Alnwick-based Northumberland Gazette , instead.

Sarah Fyfe, who runs Peacock Blues on Westgate, said the misunderstanding caused her to cancel deliveries. She said: “One of the road closure signs was placed at the west end of Westgate, so we thought Westgate was going to be closed to traffic.

“I cancelled all of my deliveries, which is a big thing for us because we restore furniture.”

Local county councillor Ian Hutchinson said businesses affected by the scheme on Main Street had been notified – but not those on Westgate since that was not part of the scheme.

Coun. Hutchinson added: “I made the county council’s highways department aware that there had been an error, and people were thinking that both Main Street and Westgate were going to close.”

A county council spokeswoman said: “Unfortunately a road closure sign had been put in the wrong place in error. It was moved to the correct location on Main Street before the work started on Monday.”

She added that the public notice for the scheme had already been pre-booked to appear in the Northumberland Gazette , prior to the council’s decision last month to re-instate all such notices in the Hexham Courant .