SHOPKEEPERS are celebrating after road works outside their businesses were finally completed yesterday.

Engineers put the finishing touches to the new £4m one-way traffic system at the Riverside in Stockton, which is designed to open up the North Shore area for development.

And it could not have come a moment too soon for unhappy business owners in the area, who had lost huge profits in the past seven months.

Darren Evans, manager of Goldcast Computers, in Church Road, said: "We are very excited about today.

"Luckily, we had opened a new store in the Castlegate shopping centre and that has carried us through recent months because our weekly sales and takings have been as low as a third since the works started."

Alexander Cook, of The Craft Mill, said: "We are very glad to see it all finished."

But Kevin Bowler, who runs the Roundabout Kitchen take-away, said he feared the new system would act as an "east Stockton by-pass", allowing drivers to get from Sedgefield straight through to Ingleby Barwick and Yarm.

He said: "I'm hoping we can get our business back to normal now, but we will have to wait and see. I have serious concerns about the changes to the roads."

Stephen Tate, of Addison News, said businesses were just hoping the council could improve parking in the area.

He said: "Parking is critical for all of us, but we are hoping that from September there will be new limitations on how long people can park outside the shops."

Councillor Bob Cook said: "The scheme is helping transform this part of Stockton and will mean safer roads and smoother traffic flow.

"It has been a very complex project to complete and, although this has inevitably meant some inconvenience for motorists and local people, the engineers deserve considerable praise for keeping this to a minimum and completing the project on time."