Thomas Lewis Way: Businesses left empty and out of pocket

A HGV spilt up to 580 litres of fuel across two miles of the city's road network on Thursday morning, as the road had to be shut in both directions between the St Deny's junction and the turning to Land Road, with police looking to "ensure the safety of motorists".

The HGV was leaving a yard on Imperial Road when a raising bollard punctured its fuel tank.

Commuters were warned to "plan your journey" and Bluestar bus services 16 and 20 faced "significant delays" of up to 50 minutes.

Southampton City Council workers at the scene of the spill. (Image: Matt Davey) Drivers reported being late for work, with Jo Cornwall saying she was "40 minutes late" due to congestion and surrounding roads being put under stress by the closure.

But businesses on Empress Road were hit heavily, as customers could not access the road which connects to Thomas Lewis Way.

READ MORE: Commuters warned to 'plan journey' as diesel spill shuts major road

Holly Berndsen, who works for Monkey Bizness Southampton, said at 11am that the soft play area has been "open since 9.30am" and had no customers in yet.

The road closure for the diesel spill. (Image: Matt Davey) Holly said: "I'd just driven down from Brighton and I had to park in the housing estate because I couldn't get here. I've just walked across the road and it's all closed, there's sand all over the road.

"You can smell the oil, where it's been spilt.

"It's a pain because we're like, do we close, do we open? We don't know what to do."
 

Jim Sidney, commercial director at Vanguard Fixings.

Jim Sidney, commercial director at Vanguard Fixings, said that the road closure will "knock" the business out for "a couple of days" because it could not receive deliveries.

"We usually say we guarantee your delivery tomorrow. But obviously the drivers could not get into us today to do those deliveries, because of this closure," he said.

"It’s really messing us up. We’re having to let down 24 deliveries for tomorrow, we can probably only do a quarter of them today. We’re going to have a lot of unhappy customers."

READ MORE: Businesses struggling as major road still closed by 'large diesel spill' - live

Jim said he also manages a cold food storage that delivers fresh produce to caravan parks on the Isle of Wight.

But the driver making a delivery was "refused entry" to Empress Road, meaning that the food will not be able to make the trip across the Solent on Friday at 3.30am as usual.

'We are the forgotten part of the community'

The road closure at Thomas Lewis Way. (Image: Matt Davey) Richard Waterman of Asgood Engineering said had "no contact" from anyone at the council.

He said: "We’ve tried to phone the council but you can’t get through to anyone.

"Our suppliers, delivery drivers and customers are being told at the road block that the businesses beyond the road block are being told to close, we haven’t had that at all."

Richard was told the road had to close due to concerns with diesel falling into drains, and said he was not seeing any customers at all.

"They’re letting cars out of the area but they’re not letting them back," he said.

READ MORE: Commuters stationary for hours as overturned car closes major motorway

He said other businesses were having to "ferry car parts out of their store to get to the vans" which were not being allowed back through the closure.

Richard said: "We’re waiting on some steel delivery for an emergency job for a customer, which won’t get delivered today.

"So there’s a hole in the ground that won’t get appropriately covered today.

"We pay a significant amount of business rates and we get no service. We are the forgotten part of the community."