FAILURE to complete the work on improvements to Tenbury town centre is damaging the health of people in the town with a report than at least one person has had a nervous breakdown as a consequence.

Members of Tenbury Town Council have become increasingly exasperated and unhappy at the long overrun in the completion of the project that should have been finished at the end of March.

Town councillor Janet Fielder hit out at the fact that so much of the work had been done at night and that the completion of the job had been scheduled for the hours of darkness.

“One person has had a breakdown because of all of the light and noise,” she said.

“Five nights without sleep is unacceptable and it is especially noisy at about 4am when the men put their tools away.

“Could the work have been split up so that some was done in the day and some at night?”

A new member of the Town Council, Alan Eachus, a landscape architect and former member of Tenbury Civic Society, said that there are aspects of the workmanship that he is unhappy about.

“I have no problem with the public realm improvements but I do believe that the execution could have been better,” said Cllr Eachus.

“When phase two comes along there should be a better standard of workmanship.”

The original plan had been for the entire public realm improvements in Tenbury to be undertaken at the same time as the building of the Tesco supermarket on the former auction yard site.

However, because of the delay by Tesco it was decided by Worcestershire County Council to split the project in two with the first phase taking place in the early part of 2015.

But the second phase will have to wait until Tesco begins building the supermarket because a significant part of the funding will come from the company that has said it will not release the money until the construction of the supermarket gets underway.

Tenbury mayor Mark Willis is concerned that there is still no indication of when of if the Tesco project will go ahead.

“The store in Tenbury is not in the Tesco programme for the work until next February,” he said.

“If it is not in the programme announced next February will Worcestershire County Council go ahead with phase two?”

Ken Pollock, who represents Tenbury on Worcestershire Council, said he could not give that assurance.

Councillor Pollock defended the county council and said that the decision to do as much work as possible at night had been made to limit the amount of disruption to traders and the life of the town.

He said it was wrong to put any blame on the contractors Ringway, who were just following county council instructions.

Cllr Pollock defended the delays but admitted that an audit had revealed 38 problems that needed to be resolved.

“I note the concern that the public realm work in Tenbury is not yet complete," he said.

“It is regrettable that this is so but there are a variety of causes. One of the most significant is the delay in receiving the final quantity of blue blocks to finish the corner of the Bowkett’s car park where the Christmas tree stands.

“The county council is suffering from the same sort of hold ups experienced by builders across the country as the manufacturers of bricks have been understandably conservative in their planning of production.”

He said he believed that the town will benefit when the project is complete.

“I hope that the general conclusion by the townspeople and retailers is that the works are a significant improvement and that they will benefit the trade in the town in the long run,” said Cllr Pollock.

“We now wait for a definite word from Tesco as to their actions and then we should be able to complete phase two.”