CALLS have been made for better public information about minor road safety projects across the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole area.

Former council leader Vikki Slade says the public ought to be able to easily find the criteria for schemes and what to know what the chances are of bringing them about.

Cllr Simon McCormack has called on the council could publish an interactive map, or introduce a system similar to that used for planning which shows everyone what has been applied for. He said he had been fighting for a scheme in his ward for seven years and still had no guarantee it would happen. He said its progress had been slowed by a mistake which it had taken some time to realise and correct.

The council is to adopt a set of criteria for road safety schemes across the area – having operated on the legacy systems from previous councils until now.

Transport network manager Richard Pearson told the council’s overview and scrutiny committee that the authority had finite resources, both finance and staff, and needed to present a fair way for schemes to be assessed which was common to all its areas.

A new document which sets out the main types of schemes, from dropped kerbs to 20mph zones, has just been produced explaining the criteria for applications.

Cllr Slade said: “In September 2020 we were considering a ranking scheme for the whole area. The public need to know where schemes are and their ranking….it feels like the democracy has gone out of this.”

She said that people who currently used the council website to try and find out how to go about getting double yellow lines, a zebra crossing, or other improvements, were offered no information apart from an email address to contact. She said the council needed to do better.

Mr Pearson said the authority did publish the details of traffic orders being applied for which could be found on the website and also contacted ward councillors when requests for traffic orders were made with their views being taken into consideration before proposed changes were published.