A CLEVELEYS man who feared there would be an explosive end to a unhole-y battle with United Utilities says trouble may blow up again.

Minibus driver Ian Cornwell of Carr Gate, Cleveleys, contacted claimed it was only a matter of time before a paving stone covering a hole in his drive collapsed beneath his gas-powered minibus.

Despite his pleas to United Utilities to fill the three foot wide, two-and-a-half foot deep hole they had created during nearby work, Ian said he waited weeks for something to be done.

"United Utilities have been laying a cable from the Royal Hotel to the sub station at the bottom of the road. Five weeks this has been going on," he said.

"They had all the pavement up from the top of Carr Gate down to Thornton Gate, and they left this big hole inside my front gates."

At first, a paving stone was laid across the hole. But self-employed Ian, who provides transport for children with special needs to and from school, said he was afraid to run his minibus over it. "I'm running over the flag and it's sliding and the bus is sliding with it," he said on Monday.

"What is worrying me is this bus doesn't run on petrol, it runs on gas. If I do go into this hole it could rupture the fuel line to the gas tanks behind the front wheels and you don't need to be a health and safety expert to know what's going to happen."

But yesterday (Wednesday), despite the hole having been filled in and paved over, Ian said there could still be trouble on Carr Gate.

"I can't tell until I've run across it a few times whether the job's been done properly or not. And I can't see any reason whatsoever why it didn't get put back before."

He said barriers had been taken down around the wet sand and concrete near his house. "People are just walking across it. It's like footprints in the snow. You would think they would have left the barriers up.

"At a neighbour's they took out his driveway and they have put half of it back with concrete and some kids have written all sorts of stuff into the concrete and nothing's been done. Nobody's happy here."

A spokeswoman for United Utilities yesterday (Wednesday) confirmed work had been carried out along Carr Gate. "We have been working at Carr Gate to provide a larger capacity electricity supply for the Royal Hotel," she said.

Work on the actual cable was now complete, she said, and United Utilities planned to fully complete "reinstatement" of the pavement and any necessary work, including backfilling, by the end of today (Thursday).

She added: "When the work has finally been concluded we will make sure that the site is cleaned up and tidied up. We wouldn't just walk off and leave it in that state."