A road which has been dogged by numerous closures this year is to shut for more than a week later this month.

Lower Rainham Road, in Rainham, will close for nine days from October 21.

It will be shut between Station Road and Otterham Quay Lane – in both directions.

Work is being carried out by Connect IT Utility Services (CIUS), which will be providing electricity for more than 200 homes at Redrow's new Hamlet Park development.

Civil engineering manager, Jon Doak-Dunnelly, says both Southern Water and BT will also be undergoing work during the closure.

Yet although work is being carried out between 8am and 5pm, he says the road will be closed all day during the project.

He explained: "We are providing power to the new Redrow development, so we have organised for Southern Water and BT to come in too at the same time.

"Nine days was the best amount of time I could do to enable everything to get done at once and under this one closure.

"I don't want to have to close the road and then three weeks later another company have to close it again.

"There have been other works in the area during the year which haven't been as smooth as this should be.

"The council have said the road can only be shut on certain dates, so that's why it's being done during half-term.

"It will be shut for 24 hours a day – of course if work can be done sooner I will try and reopen earlier."

The road has been the subject of a number of closures this year.

Many were caused by CityFibre installing new internet cables for homes in the area, while more recent closures have been for emergency gas repairs, water leaks and work by telecomms company Openreach.

Meanwhile the road, between the junction of Berengrave Lane and Lower Bloors Lane, is to shut again this weekend while CityFibre does further maintenance.

The constant closures have caused many businesses to struggle.

Steve Brinsley, 57, said his pub The Three Mariners had been losing “thousands of pounds a week” since May due to a lack of footfall.

He said many customers had stopped coming to the watering hole because of the roadworks.

This exact loss of revenue is something which has also been hitting Berengrave Service Station.

A spokesman for the company, which sells fuel and used cars at the junction of Lower Rainham Road and Berengrave Lane, said of the closures: "They are absolutely affecting our business – more so our fuel sales.

"It's stop-start all the time, but of course there's nothing you can do about it.

"We have spoken to the council who haven't hinted at any form of compensation.

"We are losing thousands of pounds a week."

However, Gail Willoughby who runs the Three Sisters, in Otterham Quay Lane, says she has been seeing more customers due to some motorists getting lost as a result of the closures.

"The closures haven't affected us too much, although September is normally quiet anyway," she added.

"But because of all the traffic, we have found on some days more people have popped in here because they don't know where they necessarily are.

"It is infuriating though when you want to leave the house, and customers say to us that it's taken ages to get here.

"But we have a core regular base who know it's been going on for so long now that people have become almost used to it."