Whittington residents are preparing for 10 days of disruption in the village as the village’s level crossing is set to be closed to vehicles.

Work to renew the crossing is set to be carried out, which will result in the village being split into two halves for the duration of the repairs.

Pedestrians will be able to access either side of the crossing on weekdays, however cars and buses will have to use longer routes to get around the works.

Pedestrians will not have access on weekends.

Vice-chairman of Whittington Parish Council Frank Davies said the closure has to happen to complete much-needed work.

He said: “It’s just one of those things that’s got to be done.

“I think people understand that and know we’ll have to put up with the disruption in the meantime.

“There will be ways around it for everyone to use, I feel as though the volume of traffic will be increased elsewhere as opposed to inside the actual village.

“The crossing is very rough to drive over at the minute so it’s definitely something which needs to be done.

“As long as there’s pedestrian access then I think it will be ok.”

If workers were in a situation which enabled them to do some longer days or some night shifts, that might get the job done quicker than expected and reduce the outage of the level crossing.

It’s often the case that they estimate more time than is required on these jobs anyway.

I think there will obviously be some issues for the school buses that go along the route through the village, but I think we’re quite lucky that a lot of people in the area choose to walk to school.

Gillian Roberts, of Whittington Senior Citizens Club, agreed that the work is necessary, but questioned the decision to carry out the work when school restarts.

“It does need to be done,” she said.

“The current state of it is ruining peoples’ cars, so it needs repairing badly.

“I can’t believe they’ve chosen to do it when they have with the children being back in school.”

“I think it would’ve been better to do it over the summer holidays with people being on holiday and children off school.

“A lot of buses run along routes through the village, so it could cause problems for them also.”

Work is expected to start on Friday, August 30 and is due to last until Monday, September 9.