We attended a meeting of the council’s Locality group on Thursday to express our concerns about the decision to remove both pedestrian controlled crossings at Regent Circus in front of the new development.

The planners have implemented a ‘Shared Streets’ scheme operating in other parts of the country.

This scheme allows equal access to vehicles and pedestrians relying on each to ‘give way’ when they meet.

It is essential therefore that at crossing points drivers and pedestrians have eye contact with each other.

Blind people are naturally afraid to use these crossings and in this particular case are denied easy access to town centre shops.

The council’s response was typically trite with the officer concerned saying that the scheme operates successfully in London, before conceding that local pressure in Southampton had forced that local authority to re-install pedestrian controlled traffic lights at one potentially dangerous crossing.

Her suggestion that blind people could be trained to use this already difficult crossing at Regent Circus we found offensive and patronising as if blind people are a sub-human species rather than ordinary folk who have a visual impairment.

We urged council planners to reconsider their decision otherwise they could face responsibility for the death or serious injury of a blind person trying to cross the road at this location which will become even more dangerous when the new development opens later this year John Vickery (Chairman) & Mike Beale (Secretary) Swindon Branch, Wiltshire Blind Association