Suffolk County Council wanted to put traffic lights on every road into the clock tower, and make us look like the centre of London and not a rural market town

The basis for the road and roundabout changes is the safety figures from Suffolk County Council. These actually list accidents in Bury and Old Station Roads, the High Street and Exeter Road .

They clearly overstate the actual roundabout accidents, which are quite few and have decreased in recent years.

Doing away with the right turn from Waitrose is interesting and the Suffolk County Council answer was this. Anyone wanting to turn right can go left, then up the Fordham Road and along Noel Murless Drive, or go to the clock tower, up the High Street and along Hamilton Road. Such a statement gives little confidence in its judgment. What about people just wanting to go to Exning Road or to the Rookery car park one asks ?

Closing Exeter Road except for traffic coming up the High Street means that traffic from the Bury Road and Old Station Road has to turn along Fordham Road, left down past Waitrose and into Exeter Road, even if all they want to do is go to the Rookery car park.There are already hold-ups here without this large increase in traffic .

A key feature of these changes is to have open spaces. This means that there are no pedestrian crossing islands and no road markings. Even the council's own safety report questioned this but the county council says it does not have to adopt this report and the consultants had got it wrong.

So where in Suffolk does the open system work? The answer is nowhere in the county nor anywhere in England, but there are examples in Holland.

A small point is that in Holland a driver hitting a cyclist or a pedestrian is automatically assumed to be at fault

Four years ago, Suffolk County Council gave us a road system round Waitrose and the Rookery which stranded motorists in the Rookery and lost business for Newmarket by making traffic movements almost impossible.

Is it any wonder that there are deep reservations about this scheme.

Surely the centre of Ipswich is the place to experiment and not a town 50 miles away, or is it?

Warwick Hirst

Newmarket councillor

I visited Waitrose on Monday and came out to find I could only turn right.

Not good as I was aiming to go along Fred Archer around St Mary's Corner and into the Valley Way Estate.

Because I could not turn right I was forced to go up the Fordham Road and through the estate on to the Exning Road –- more than a mile further than necessary.

I could have used the clock tower and the High Street. Guess why I did not?

This decision has added considerable distance to what was a very simple journey, and is possibly one of the least green choices I have seen in recent years.

I wonder if they are going to pay the costs of my extra mileage?

Richard Youlden

Cotton End Road,

Exning