Traffic on Portland Beach Road will be under two-way traffic lights during evenings, starting from tonight.

Temporary traffic signals will be in place overnight between 9pm tonight (Friday July 19) until 6am Saturday morning with a convoy vehicle leading traffic slowly past the works area.

The work will take three nights, returning after the weekend for two nights on Monday 22 and Tuesday July 23.

Work is due to be completed in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Scottish and Southern Electricity (SSE) is returning to resurface Portland Beach Road amid concerns the carriageway was left "irregular and bumpy" following previous work.

The utility company carried out electrical cabling work on the road last year as part of a £2.6 million project to upgrade the electricity network between Weymouth and Portland.

However, Dorset Council have said that the surface of the carriageway was left "irregular and bumpy" which is why more works are necessary.

The authority said the one-mile-long trench dug up during the upgrade failed the ‘rolling straight edge’ test after the works, confirming that the surface was not compliant with specification.

The rolling straight edge test uses a specialist piece of equipment to determine the smoothness of a road surface.

Kevin Cheleda, Dorset Council Traffic Team Leader, said: “We inspect utility/private contractor work at three separate stages – during the work, six months after completion and around two years after completion.

“SSE has agreed to resurface the full width of the southbound carriageway for the length of the trench as this will ensure the same issue doesn’t reoccur.”

A SSE spokesman said: “We will always do everything we can to ensure that any excavations we carry out are reinstated to a standard equivalent to, if not better than, that prior to our work starting.

“As part of our £2.6m project to upgrade the electricity network between Weymouth and Portland we reinstated our excavations along Portland Beach Road last summer, and had agreed with the council that we would return at a later date to install a permanent top layer of Tarmac.

"However, as the council advised us that they had scheduled other works in that area before our return, we are covering the overall costs of carrying out the permanent reinstatement.”