Tired residents in a St Albans street have suffered sleepless nights for more than a year due to a noisy manhole cover.

Janet Richards and her neighbours in Hart Road are fed up of the metal cover outside their front door that clanks loudly every time a car drives over it.

Ms Richards said: "You live with it and then in the end you just can’t stand it anymore.

"You just want to quietly enjoy your house but there is this continuous clunk clunk. You can’t sit quietly and read a book.

"It keeps us awake. You can particularly hear it when there isn’t any distracting day time noise.

"Every five minutes there is a clunk."

Residents have contacted Hertfordshire County Council who, after checking the area, decided it was the responsibility of Thames Water.

However the water company have still not been out to fix the problem.

Ms Richards added: "I didn’t expect it to be fixed immediately, there are things much more important, but it has been a year.

"It is 24/7. You can hear it through double glazing.

"Any car coming in or going out of out road or Pageant Road has to go over it. There is no space to go around it. It is quite a narrow road."

Councillor Chris White, the local Liberal Democrat representative for the area, has also been in contact with the company to try and get the problem fixed.

He said: "Residents have complained and nothing has been done.

"The county council has backed the residents and nothing has been done.

"And yet, every time a vehicle passes over the manhole cover there is a loud clunk, many times a day. At night this is understandably keeping people awake."

Natalie Slater, a senior press officer as Thames Water, said: "We are sorry for the length of time it has taken to get this manhole cover repaired.

"Our engineers are now working to get this fixed as a priority, but we will need to wait for permission to suspend the parking bays in the road while we get this done.

"We expect this to take around a week and will then be getting this fixed. In the meantime, we are going to be back out there today (Monday) to see if we can put in a temporary fix to stop the noise."