The whole saga of the Belmont roundabout upgrade has been a catalogue of incompetence and inertia.

Ms Annie Harris has suddenly discovered that by reducing the frequency of the traffic light changes, a lot more cars will be let though in a given time. Almost any motorist could have advised the Highways Agency on that little gem.

In addition, we are to get detection loops built into the road. Hooray! However, why did the experts on highways and traffic fail to work that out before they created the chaos?

Ms Harris says "The Highways Agency will be on site for the next six months". Cause for another hooray! If they had been on the site for the past six months, they might have noticed, as I have, that apart from one occasion, that I viewed, only between 16.6% and 42.85% of the workforce were actually working at any one time.

Do not be fooled by the council claiming it is all the fault of others. In my view they caused it by not stipulating penalty clauses in the original planning consent.

Peter Cocks, Lower Bullingham