A STOURBRIDGE car dealer claims his business has been sent crashing while resurfacing work takes place outside his Birmingham Road premises.

Simon Batham, who has run Roundabout Cars for the past ten years, says business has already dropped off by 50 per cent since carriageway resurfacing started on Monday.

And the work is set to continue for another three weeks, bringing traffic chaos to the area.

Mr Batham also claims some of the work has caused damage to vehicles as bits of brick have been sent flying onto his cars.

He said: "We've had to pull some cars away from the forecourt and out of view because of the work.

"As a result it has really hit any passing trade, not only because we can't put cars on view, but also because people can't pull up in the first place.

"The resurfacing work has really hurt us.

"Monday and Tuesday were particularly bad because we had to park some cars in the surrounding areas of Bagley Street and Hungary Hill as we couldn't get them onto the forecourt.

"I had one customer who came over from Bridgnorth and had to park outside the post office in Junction Road, which must be a ten-minute walk away.

"We need to sell a certain amount of cars each month to pay our way but this resurfacing work has left us really struggling to the point where I could cry.

"We simply can't keep having days like this, but I feel there's nothing we can do. I feed really hard done by.

"I appreciate they have to repair the roads, but this has left us with three weeks of hell. We didn't get notice that this work was taking place until last Friday, which didn't give us enough time to arrange any contingency plans."