SIR — One cannot resist questioning the implications of the report in last week's Free Press indicating that consideration is being given to the installation of a mini-roundabout in Wellington Square.

It would be interesting to learn how drivers of giant articulated lorries and large coaches can be expected to negotiate the size of roundabout which would fit into the existing road space available at this junction.

Those responsible for its design may of course intend utilising part of the central pedestrian precinct recently laid out so satisfactorily in the general enhancement of the Square — but it would be a great pity if this was the case.

I personally am firmly of the opinion there is only one satisfactory solution to the problem of safely controlling the movement of both vehicles and pedestrians in this central hub of our town.

This is to install strategically positioned and regulated traffic lights allowing for independent movement of vehicles and those on foot.

More expensive of course, but if such saves a fatal accident — as well it may — then it should receive prior consideration. This, I contend, should be put in hand before such an eventuality occurs.

Why it should take almost 12 months before action is initiated to regulate movement at this dangerous and busy junction is beyond reason.

It may be remembered that some 40 years ago the fine old Plume of Feathers Hotel with its elegant frontage was demolished and replaced by that faceless flat-footed folly which now permanently offends an otherwise graceful square, serving as a perpetual reminder of the misguided action of the local council at that time.

Have our traffic planners no record of the identical unsatisfactory road priority as now exists being tried out but soon abandoned at that time as being unworkable and dangerous after a very short trial period?

Now, when there is at least double the amount of traffic involved, it seems to take twice as long to highlight the error.

One cannot help feeling that our elected local town Council is not quite as assiduous as it ought to be by failing to demand earlier action for allowing this dangerous traffic situation in the Square to remain unchecked.

These council members are, after all, on the spot and one would have assumed capable of sizing up the lamentable state of affairs which has held sway in our town centre for so long.

Perhaps I could briefly draw attention to an entirely different venue in suggesting that an eye could also be cast on the devastation currently happening to the recently constructed promenade at Butlins end of Warren Road.

Is such apparent sustained mechanical disturbance either justified or financially viable?

Car parking at this vicinity could surely so easily have been achieved by originally designing a narrower promenade (without that massive row of steps), affording a correspondingly wider road allowing for oblique parking on both sides of the road, thus providing room for many more parked vehicles than now being catered for in the present long drawn out upheaval.

Jim Bennett,

Shute Farm,

Minehead.