Portlanders will face more disruption as a further four weeks of roadworks begins.

Temporary traffic lights will be installed at the bottom of the hill below Portland Heights as Wessex Water carries out repairs to a collapsed sewer.

Three-way lights will be in place at the junction of New Road and Verne Hill Road from Monday, April 23.

The works come after residents suffered four months of traffic jams during SSEN roadworks to replace electricity cables on the beach road.

The sewer repair has been timed to coincide with the completion of the SSEN work.

But Portland resident Martine Howard said she thought the work should have been done at the same time as the beach road works.

A Weston resident said they understood the work was necessary but were concerned about the knock-on effect to bus journeys.

"My concern is my children making it to school on time – during the past roadworks they were leaving at 7.25am to do a less than five mile journey and were still late for school. This next lot of works takes place at the start of the GCSEs," they said.

Mal Haddon of Easton said: "I wonder if an alternative route will be opened up for those of us around Tophill – going via the dockyard would certainly help."

However, Amy Bower said it was just one of those things and people needed to 'move on.'

Weymouth and Portland Borough councillor for Tophill West Kerry Baker said: "At the end of the day regardless of people's feelings the work has to be completed. Like with the beach road works, I understand people's frustrations but if it doesn't get done and there was an accident it would be a very different story."

Portland Town councillor and mayor of Portland, Charlie Flack said although it would be disruptive, he did not think it would be as bad as the beach road works.

Kerry Miles of Wessex Water said: “We’ve waited several weeks to carry out these repairs so as to avoid a clash with the SSEN scheme and hopefully minimise disruption for road users.

“Traffic lights will be manually controlled between 7am and 7pm on weekdays to improve traffic flow. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this essential work.”

n Elsewhere, roadworks continue today on Lanehouse Rocks Road at the junction with Camp Road and All Saints Road in Wyke Regis. Manually controlled temporary lights will be in use between 9am and 3pm.