THE main route between Ventnor and Shanklin — devastated by a major landslide at Leeson Road nine months ago — is set to close again tonight (Sunday, September 8).

Leeson Road, which reopened in July following the catastrophic landslide on the evening of December 10 last year, will see new works get underway.

The road in Ventnor is set to close at 10pm.

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The Isle of Wight Council aims to complete the works and reopen Leeson Road by Christmas — working alongside utility companies such as Southern Gas Networks and Southern Water, to ensure roadworks disruption, other than emergency works, is kept to a minimum.

The first of three boreholes will be dug, as deep as 110m, to extract core samples for testing and to help build a picture of the geology in the area.

With the area being unstable, it is hoped an early warning system for geological movements will eventually be introduced.

Some local councillors have questioned the need for sinking the boreholes into the road, to install more monitoring devices, arguing they could be better positioned on private land adjacent to the road, which would allow the road to remain open.

We asked the Isle of Wight Council if the road could likely be open sooner than Christmas.

The spokesperson said today (Sunday, September 8): ‘’The closure is currently set for ten to 12 weeks, this includes time for the drilling to take place and for the monitoring to be installed as well as allowing for any issues arising during the drilling operations.

"The drilling teams will be working weekends to try and ensure that the works can be completed earlier.

"When the first set of data has been analysed the council and Island Roads will be able to decide if it is possible to reopen the road.

"The movement monitoring and sampling are key to inform a decision to reopen the road.’’