Roadworks causing traffic chaos in Ipswich’s Crown Street have been removed - after a council revoked a firm’s permit to carry them out.
CityFibre will now complete the works overnight next week after Ipswich Buses was among those to complain at the delays.
Suffolk County Council said CityFibre had failed to adhere to strict rules it had imposed.
The firm had started work in Crown Street on November 23 but, when the project over-ran, temporary traffic lights were needed to ensure they would be finished by Friday, December 4.
This was to avoid any impact on footfall to the town on the first weekend non-essential shops reopened.
A county council spokesperson said: “Prior to these works taking place, we placed some site-specific conditions on CityFibre to ensure impact on road users was kept to a minimum.
“This included manually-controlled lights throughout the day to avoid congestion and significant changes to how they managed traffic through the site.
“These conditions have not been adhered to.
“Following these failings, we have revoked CityFibre’s permit to work here and their works are being cleared from site.
“We will be undertaking a further investigation into these failings.”
Ipswich Buses said some of its services faced delays of up to 25minutes due to the works in Crown Street.
The temporary traffic lights impeded buses from entering or leaving the Tower Ramparts bus station.
Stephen Bryce, general manager for Ipswich Buses, said: “We want to grow the market and show people that the bus is credible alternative to the private car, offer best value fares and invest in our fleet, but public transport needs to higher up on the agenda.
“Nobody would go and dump three-way traffic lights on the Norwich to London train line or dig a hole in the middle of rush hour and buses need the same respect.”
A spokesperson for CityFibre said: “In response to the disruption to public transport services on Crown Street, we have suspended our planned works and cleared the site.
“The timing had originally been selected to take advantage of the lower volumes of traffic resulting from Covid-19 measures.
“However, we have worked with the county council to arrange overnight works next week instead, to avoid any further disruption.”
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