FOR a humble hill, Loftus Bank has created a mountain of a problem.

Engineers with Redcar and Cleveland Council say the £1m rebuild of the land slip-hit bank has been the hardest job they have ever tackled.

Coun Sylvia Szintai, lead councillor for Environment and Infrastructure said: "I've been a councillor for 13 years and never known a worse job than this. It is a saga worthy of a book."

Work has been on-going since a slice of the bankside equivalent to half the width of the road crashed 100ft into the bottom of a ravine in February 1999.

And it is not over yet. The bank which carries the A174 Whitby coastal road is being closed for the final phase of work to stabilise Loftus Bank, starting on Saturday, August 5.

The council is set to operate 16-hour working days, seven days a week, in a bid to ensure the road remains closed for no longer than nine weeks.

Coun Mrs Szintai said: "We cannot avoid this closure, but I am determined that we will do all we can to minimise the impact."

Local town councils, business groups and residents have been consulted and 4,000 newsletters are poised to be sent out to homes and business premises in Loftus, Liverton, Easington, SkinninMountgrove and Carlin How.

Coun Mrs Sdzintai said: "We are asking the community to bear with us in the final stages of this extremely complex construction project."

Ahead of the closure, traffic calming measures have been introduced in Skinningrove and Loftus to force traffic that would normally have used the bank to slow down as it travels through built up areas.