BUSINESSES are struggling to cope with huge tailbacks which are adding at least 20 minutes onto their delivery routes.

Jennifleurs Florist in St Christopher Road, Colchester, offers customers a same day delivery service.

However, since works for the Ipswich Road improvement scheme started three days ago, staff have noticed a huge problem. They are situated in between St John’s Road and Ipswich Road.

Co-owner Phil Suarez said: “We are trying to access various undertakers around town.

“It’s an absolute diabolical mess. Who thought it would be a good idea to filter Ipswich Road into one lane at the bottom?

“The whole of St John’s is gridlocked. I just can’t see how this is sustainable.

“We are going to be looking at up to 20 minutes extra per journey.

“There is obviously some sort of masterplan for what this is trying to achieve, but Colchester is rapidly grinding to a halt.”

Mr Suarez said the business has always been successful due to their ability to serve customers quickly.

He added: “If I have to start planning to leave an hour early to get to places, at some point I’m going to let a customer down and I don’t think that is acceptable.

“If it was a six week project we would put up with it, but this isn’t going to finish until the end of 2019.

“We can’t cope with this amount of traffic and from a pollution point of view it6 can’t be doing any good.”