A COUPLE’S wedding day was “ruined” when workers carried spoil 50 metres from street excavations and dumped it outside a prestigious hotel.

The wedding party at the Hotel Du Vin in Brighton were left dismayed after workers dumped a mound of rubble outside their reception room.

A UK Power Networks official said that engineers working to create a new connection for another customer further up the street had left the waste but that it should have been cleared up on the same day.

The firm has apologised and said investigations were ongoing into how the pile was left from Thursday morning until the following day.

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman confirmed that the electricity maintenance company did not have permission to dump the waste.

Simon Maguire, general manager at the Ship Street hotel, said that he received a rude response from workers when he asked them to remove it. He said it was the latest in a long line of issues of with works being carried out at the nearby Old Ship Hotel and along the A259 which presented a terrible image to customers visiting the city.

He added: “The wedding party asked is there anything that we could do and all I could say was would you like us to draw the curtains.

“It ruined their wedding day.”

A UK Power Networks spokeswoman said the firm was sorry to hear of the upset caused to the customer.

She said: “Because of a lack of space in this old part of the city centre, it was decided to move the spoil from the hole being dug to a location not too far away.

“The spoil should have been taken away on Thursday and we apologise that this was not done and an investigation is under way to find out why that did not happen.”

She added the work on the new connection should be finished by Wednesday.

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman said: “UK Power Networks notified us of their intention to carry out work earlier this week to connect up a property on Ship Street near Hotel du Vin.

“However, we did not give them permission to dump their spoil outside Hotel du Vin. As soon as we were made aware of the situation we immediately asked UK Power Networks to remove the spoil, which they have now done.”