Dales Lees road expected to reopen on Monday

THE REOPENING of the A968 Dales Lees road has been delayed again – but only by a few more days.

The road, which has been closed for cabling work, was due to reopen today (Friday).

But Shetland Islands Council said it is now expected to reopen on Monday 10 November.

The council’s roads service has, for safety reasons, asked developer SSEN and its principal contractor to reinstate the road’s edge line before reopening the road to through traffic.

Work has begun on this but due to today’s weather conditions cannot be completed today, as had been hoped.

Forecasts indicate that there will be a suitable weather window this weekend which would allow the reinstatement of the edge line to be completed.

The road connects traffic from Voe through to Firth/Mossbank and the Toft ferry terminal, which links to Yell and subsequently to Unst.

This means that traffic heading to and from the Toft terminal has had to go through Brae.

The road was closed in early July to allow SSEN to lay cabling as part of its North Mainland reinforcement project.

However, it was originally due to reopen in October before being pushed back to November.

At that time Yell Community Council, posting on social media, said it had been told by SSEN Distribution that the road closure was due to “unanticipated SIC tar plant outages”.

SSEN previously said the road at Dales Lees was too narrow to allow for cable laying work to be carried out while traffic was still flowing.

The company is laying two high voltage underground cables to connect Sullom Voe Terminal to the local/national grid.

The project will also secure the power supply to households in the North Mainland and the North Isles once Sullom Voe Terminal’s own power station has been switched off.

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