Gas firm '˜confident' Portsmouth leak will be fixed '˜by the end of the week'

Part of Winston Churchill Avenue was sealed off after a gas leak on Sunday evening.

SGN says the work should be completed by the end of the week.

Bradley Barlow, a spokesman for SGN, said: ‘It’s still too early to say how long our work will take but we’re hoping to be completed by the end of the week.

‘We’ve got a number of teams working as part of this repair and we’re using our ‘core and vac’ technology to complete our work as quickly as possible.’

The engineers will be using the road works equivalent of keyhole surgery to complete the repairs.

Health and safety manager from the University of Portsmouth David Wright was one of the first people to smell the gas.

He said: ‘I could first smell the gas around last Thursday.

‘Now here we are with a big hole in the road.’