Obvisouly, no one can control when their council will decide to undertake maintenance on the footpaths or roads. I know most Airbnb guests will be understanding about this. However, I recently received a review from a guest that complains about this (and says nothing else), and suggest it affects the accessibility of the property. Council workers obviously would never make it impossible for someone to leave their home. They put down metal sheets so that cars can exit their driveways. Would you personally reply to clarify this?
I NEVER reply to guests reviews. I would however contact Airbnb and advise it is a lie, as such ask it be removed as a false review, breach of Airbnb TOS. Offer to provide Airbnb verification from your council access was not blocked (easy to obtain).
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I hate replying to reviews, too. However, Airbnb states that this is just the guest expressing their âopinionâ and there are no guidelines that theyâve breached. I offered to have the council verify that they would never create an obstruction when undertaking work that prevented someone from leaving their property, either on foot or by vehicle, but apparently none of this matters as the guest was stating their personal opinion on how the maintenance affected them. 
I managed to avoid the bad review I new I would get. Electricity contractors pushed a letter through the door last Monday, giving 2 weeks notice that power would be off for 6hrs and digging for 2 days. Right outside our cottage, rang abb and they cancelled the 3day booking over that period. No penalties as out of my control. I think it should be compulsory for the council to notify you as well.
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Unlike @Emily I always reply to my guest reviews. When my guests say lovely things about my listing (which fortunately all but my first review have) I like to acknowledge and thank them for doing so.
In your situation, if the Council work is ongoing, then I would definitely reply to this guestâs review and say what you have here.
âThe Council is currently doing some maintenance along our road, however this hasnât and wonât affect access to our property by foot and by carâ.
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I would. I no longer reply to reviews except to clarify. I had a man humorously write about âeverytime I went outside there was a screaming girl, then I figured out it was a local bird.â I LOL and thanked him for his nice review. But I wanted to make clear to any reader that there is no screaming local bird. There is a neighbor with a macaw that they sometimes have outside. I mentioned that it is never outside at night when we are sleeping. (now that I think of it I donât think Iâve heard it since early summer, they probably re-homed it or it died)
At least they gave you notice. Last week, my wife got up to shower, turned on the water and it came out brown! We had guests arriving that day! We called the city and they verified work was being done on water line. They came out and flushed the fire hydrant outside our home for a couple hours and that solved the problem. It didnât affect our guests but I was sure nervous. It was a good thing we didnât already have guests here!
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Unfortunately Air does jack to remove a review full of lies. I had one recently and they agreed it was mean spirited but not a violation of anything. They are pretty hardline about the review system. It has to be a big overt obvious violation!
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I too always respond to bad reviews. It doesnât mean I respond in a nasty way necessarily - although a couple of times I have given into the temptation!
Usually my replies are to clarify something they got wrong.
But in your case, I would use something like @Helsiâs message. But just change âmaintenanceâ to âimprocementsâ and say The Council is making improvements along our road⌠blah, blah, blah.
Use it to sell your place by pointing out theyâre always making improvements! And of course, use it to clarify that the road wasnât completely blocked.
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Right kona - mean-spiritedness (oddly) isnât against their ToS. But lies are. So, if he can show hard evidence that the road wasnât fully blocked, I think heâd have a good chance.
Hi @JonYork
The OP said maintenance work was been undertaken not improvements. This isnât about âsellingâ anything to do what the council are doing outside of the property, but getting the message across to future guests that they still have full access to the property.
I disagree @JonYork. Regardless of whether hosts have shown that guests are lying/mistaken it is very rare for Airbnb to delete a guest review.
Iâm living proof of that. 
Well, I didnât say he could definitely get Air to remove the review, I just said I thought heâd have a good chance if he can prove the guest lied about access in their review. I know itâs extremely rare for them to do - so I donât disagree with you on that.
As far as maintenance versus improvement - maintenance is an improvement because surely things will be better after they finish the maintenance! If not, whatâs the point in doing it?
Anyway, âmaintenanceâ is kind of a negative word implying hard work and dirty jobs. âImprovementâ is a much more positive word that focuses on the nice end result rather than the hard dirty work it took to accomplish the end result.