OVERNIGHT closures on the A590 are set to continue for much of the week - after assurances it would fully open today did not materialise.

Highways England said today the road at Lindal - which has been partially closed since February 11 - would be fully open from 6am tomorrow.

But overnight closures will be in place for up to four nights, from 8pm until 6am, as work is completed. Today lines were being painted on the carriageway.

Peter Gee, Highways England project manager for the Lindal Dip work, said: “We’d like to thank drivers for their patience with the roadworks over the weekend and again today.

"We’ve worked really hard over the last few weeks to try to complete the project ahead of schedule and recover time lost due to unexpected ground conditions and delays due to some poor weather.

"That would have meant fully opening the road on Saturday morning rather than next weekend. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do this and we needed to keep temporary traffic lights in place albeit with somebody monitoring them to spare drivers from needless queuing.

"We are now aiming to fully open the road tomorrow morning with some overnight use of temporary traffic lights over the next few days as per the project programme.”

The dip has been a cause of commuter chaos for years. Within the space of a couple of hours of heavy rain the carriageway begins to flood, forcing motorists to merge onto one lane until the flooding becomes so severe that industrial water pumps have to be brought in to prevent the road from being completely closed.

As part of the works, the dip has been filled with Lytag, a coal byproduct which is just a quarter of the weight of typical aggregates used in road construction. The carriageway has also been shifted seven metres north west and raised by up to two metres.

As well as filling the dip, a 1.2 metre diameter drainage pipe has been buried beneath the surface, allowing 565 cubic metres of rainwater to be safely stored and slowly released, hopefully preventing any future flooding.