OUR county councillors have got some explaining to do. Between the two roundabouts at Highnam and Over a couple of years ago the Highways Agency wasted a fortune causing considerable delays resulting in alterations but no actual improvements. The hatchings are still there, two lanes of traffic lights are sprinkled here and there along the rest of that road, there are still none replacing the hatchings by that house. In other words our county councillors have done nothing. Perhaps they were fast asleep.

Instead of waking up, however, they were still enjoying their comfortable slumbers while people who should have known better were constructing a monstrosity in the form of a roundabout on the Lydney bypass where a new road branches off into a place called Higher Lydney Park. These people only had to walk back 200 yards to see the road which branches off into Federal Mogul to see what a T-junction looks like. This one should also have been a T-junction, not a roundabout.

A T-junction would have enabled the traffic on the bypass to keep going, it would have been more in keeping with the rest of that section of the bypass, and it would have been cheaper to construct. A roundabout might have been justified if another new road were to branch off in the opposite direction, but that seems extremely unlikely because of the proximity of the railway. Indeed, they have made it look as though they didn't know the railway was there until they started building the roundabout and then discovered they had to make it a bit skew-wiff in order to fit it in. As a result, vehicles have been running over it instead of round it, crashing into each other, knocking down road signs and demolishing street lights.

Our county councillors should now tell us how much the roundabout cost, how much extra the repairs cost, and by comparison, how much a T-Junction would have cost. So get moving, county councillors. Get that roundabout demolished before a really serious accident happens because of it. And don't forget: we still require traffic lights replacing the hatchings by that house at Highnam.

– Anthony Reeve, Littledean.