DRIVERS have been happily travelling along Worcester's Hylton Road this week thanks to the flood barriers that have kept the rising waters of the River Severn at bay.

Until yesterday.

Because from 10am until 2am, Hylton Road was closed, leading to traffic jams in nearby streets.

But it wasn't floodwater that prevented people using this vital route into and out of the city, as it has done in previous years.

No, what closed the road was the barriers themselves.

Having decided that the flood defences had done their job, the Environment Agency, which put the barriers up on Friday evening, decided to take them down again.

Without warning, they turned up, blocked the road to traffic and set about dismantling them.

So now we had the ludicrous situation where, instead of Hylton Road being closed by floodwater, it was closed by the barriers which were put up to keep the floodwater out and the road open.

Perhaps the irony was lost on the Environment Agency, but it was surely not lost on the long-suffering motorists of Worcester.

They might well ask why, having put the barriers up at night, when traffic was light, the agency didn't take them down at the same time.

And a bit of warning would have been useful to allow people to find an alternative route.

For what it's worth, the barriers seemed to do their job.

But they may go down as a failure simply because they failed to keep the road open.