VILLAGERS have been left scratching their heads after workmen dug up a huge hole in the middle of its main street and have left it unfilled for more than two months.

VILLAGERS have been left scratching their heads after workmen dug up a huge hole in the middle of its main street and have left it unfilled for more than two months.

Council officials at Glemsford claim they have been sent on a wild goose chase by various agencies as they tried to resolve the situation.

They also say they are astonished after being informed it could still take several weeks to resolve the situation.

TRANSCO officials moved onto the site on the corner of Egremont Street and Flax Lane at the beginning of August to carry out service work. They packed up tools shortly after when they discovered raw sewage had seeped into the hole.

A spokesman for TRANSCO said it would not complete the work until the sewage problem is eradicated and that the matter is now in the hands of Babergh District Council's environmental health department. The local authority is now trying to find the source of the sewage leak but that could take several weeks.

Glemsford Parish clerk Sara Turner said: "We find it astonishing that it can take more than two months to resolve this problem. We have been trying for weeks to get it sorted it out but have been pushed from pillow to post just to find out it we have been waiting for Babergh to sort the problem out.

"I first called TRANSCO on September 10 and they told me the matter was in the hand's of Babergh's environmental department who at the time said they didn't know anything about it.

We then tried several other agencies such as Anglian Water and Suffolk County Council but we still couldn't get any answers. We eventually went back to Babergh who said they we dealing with it but that it could take several weeks to resolve.

"We think it is a sad state of affairs that we had been sent round in circles for more than two months."

Babergh's senior environmental health officer Sue Herne said: "It has been discovered that foul sewage is getting into a surface water main somewhere along the line. This means somebody has wrongly connected their foul drainage system to a surface water drain and the only way to detect that is by dye testing every property along that surface water drain to find who is responsible.

"We have started the testing but we can not put a time limit on how long this will take."

A TRANSCO spokesman said: "We are ready to complete the job, but we are waiting for Babergh to complete its work first."