A Perthshire hotel is losing £1,000 a day after the council refused to carry out roadworks at night, it has been claimed.
Donald Allan, who owns the 18-bedroom Bridge of Cally Hotel, says closing the route from 9am-4pm is costing him dear.
With work to resurface the road expected to take more than two weeks and with the closure including a bank holiday weekend, he estimates the final losses could reach £20,000.
To cope with the drop in revenue he is being forced to consider cutting staff hours.
The road has long been affected by an area of subsidence, with traffic flow controlled by lights.
Perth and Kinross Council said they supplied Mr Allan with “open for business” signage, a claim he refutes.
Mr Allan said: “They didn’t give me any signs.
“On a sign up at Edradour it’s in tiny writing at the bottom, almost impossible to see, that Bridge of Cally is open.
“However, the signs at Kirkmichael don’t have that on them, neither do the ones on the A9 and at the foot of Blairgowrie.
“With the work they are doing, from 9am-4pm Monday to Friday, they are shutting the road either side of me. It basically stops all my business, so on my lunch business I am losing about £1,000 a day.
“They could do a night shift, 10pm-6pm say, but they’re not willing to do that they work during the prime time of my business period.”
“They’ve told me they won’t compensate me, it’s ‘just one of those things’.”
He added: “It’s causing me huge problems. For a small business like me to lose £1,000 a day over 14 days is a lot of money because I still have to employ the staff, who are local.
“The final nail in the coffin today was that they told me they are running behind time so they’ll be shutting the road this weekend.
“It’s a bank holiday weekend so that will hit me even harder. We are talking anywhere in the region of £14,000-£20,000 in lost revenue.
“At this moment in time I’m looking at cutting all the staff hours, which is local people who are going to be affected.
“I’m angry and disappointed because I pay rates and you’d expect the council would want to work with you and support you, not put you out of business.”
A spokeswoman for the council said: “There has been ongoing dialogue between Mr Allan and senior council officers to agree a way forward.
“Following conversations with local businesses and residents, work over this weekend will now go ahead with traffic passing in convoy rather than a full road closure.
“Working at night would be more problematic and would increase the risk of damage to utility cables which run alongside the areas of the road where drainage is being worked on.
“A broadband cable was damaged during these works on Thursday but was repaired within a few hours. This repair would have taken far longer if the road works were taking place at night.”