THE closure of York's Inner Ring Road has been put back to tonight after sewer repair work took longer than expected.

The inbound carriageway of Fishergate was due to shut completely at 9pm last night, with traffic diverted along Foss Islands Road, Stonebow and Coppergate until 6am today.

But the closure was postponed with one lane of the dual carriageway remaining open all night, even though an electronic council traffic sign nearby was still warning last night that the road would shut completely at 9pm.

The road's closure had already been postponed once earlier this week after it emerged that more work was needed than had been anticipated, with some additional sewer re-lining work required.

A Yorkshire Water spokesman said today that the sewer repair work had taken slightly longer than anticipated and piling - installed to allow the pipe repair work to take place safely - would now instead be removed tonight.

He said this meant the inbound road would be fully closed from midnight tonight until 6am tomorrow morning with a diversion route in place. 

"One inbound lane will then be re-opened at 6am tomorrow and we hope to now have all repairs compete and the road re-surfaced and fully re-open by next Tuesday morning at the latest.

"We’d like to apologise for the slight delay but it is important that the repair work is carried out to the highest standards.”

The company has been repairing a sewer five metres below ground.

The partial closure of the road down to one lane for the past fortnight has created a bottleneck on one of the inner ring road's busiest sections, leading to long queues developing on Fishergate and the A19 Fulford Road heading in to York during the rush hours.