It has been revealed the signs that caused a morning of traffic chaos were left out after work completed two days earlier.

Lower High Street was put under a directional road closure on Friday (April 19) after a gas leak on the bridge over the River Colne, causing long delays.

It was originally down for a 10-day emergency closure but in the end Cadent Gas engineers were able to use specialist equipment to reach the issue from the river, meaning it was fixed the next day with minimal excavation of the road and the closure was technically lifted.

Watford motorists may not have known this, however, as signs in the road telling them it was shut were still in place on Monday morning.

A Hertfordshire County Council spokesperson said: “When Cadent left the site, they instructed their traffic management company to collect the closure and diversion signs and make sure roads were back open.

“Unfortunately, their traffic management company did not do this this and left the closure and diversion signs in place causing a lot of confusion and unnecessary traffic problems.

“Cadent have taken responsibility for this failing and are investigating what happened with the traffic management company to avoid future issues.”

Central Watford and Oxhey Liberal Democrat county councillor Stephen Giles-Medhurst says he received “irate” emails and phone calls from residents caught in "chaos" traffic.

It was stretching past Bushey Arches, and added up to 45 minutes onto commutes at around 8.30am on Monday.

The councillor then contacted Hertfordshire Highways to get the signs out of the road that morning. He added that he had been able to drive through as normal on the Sunday himself and it is unclear why this changed by Monday morning.

A Cadent spokesperson said that the contractor it works with was unable to remove the signs because of “equipment availability”.

“We understand that this caused some confusion over whether the road was open or not and as soon as we were alerted to this on Monday, we worked with our contractor to get all signage removed as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson added.

“We’d like to thank residents for their understanding and patience as these repairs were completed and we apologise for the inconvenience caused by the delay in the road closure being removed.”