THE owner of a Bridport sandwich bar claims work on the town hall has cost him £18,000 in lost revenue.

Andrew Peters, of Get Stuffed in Bucky Doo Square, has written to complain to the town council.

A town council committee has decided that the grounds for a complaint have not been made and it will not take any further action.

Mr Peters said: “They have said basically what I thought they would say, which was, ‘Get stuffed we don’t think we have done anything wrong’.”

He added: “It didn’t surprise me that the council said they’d done nothing wrong.

“What did surprise me is that I can’t go to the local government ombudsman because apparently he doesn’t deal with complaints about town councils. So basically there is nothing more you can do.”

Mr Peters has objected to what he has called ‘grotty’ temporary toilets and the workers’ compound outside his shop.

He said: “It has affected our trade and I don’t know when they are going to be removed.”

He added: “The turnover since January compared to the same period last year was down by more than £18,000, which is about a 25 per cent reduction.”

Scaffolding around the town hall has come down but work is continuing inside and the temporary toilets are in place.

New public toilets are due to be built in the South Street car park to replace the toilets which were in the town hall.

A special meeting of Bridport Town Council’s finance and general purposes committee considered the complaint.

Councillor Martin Ray, who is council leader and committee chairman, said: “The complaint from Mr Peters was considered by the committee in accordance with the complaints procedure.

“In accordance with the procedure, the committee had to decide if the grounds for the complaint had been made.

“The committee decided that the grounds for the complaint had not been substantiated and therefore no further action would be taken.”