COUNCILLORS in Burton Bradstock have submitted an application for a 20mph zone in the village, after applications for both a pedestrian crossing and a Speed Indicator Device (SID) were rejected by Dorset Council.

The community has been calling for highway safety measures for some time due to the speed and volume of traffic which passes through the village on the coast road.

As reported, there was fury when a request for a pedestrian crossing was rejected by Dorset Council.

Giving an update on the situation at a meeting of Burton Bradstock Parish Council, vice-chairman Cllr Bob Ward said the village was "way off" in meeting the criteria for either an SID or a crossing.

The council is now applying for a 20mph speed limit on the coast road, to try and make the village safer for pedestrians.

Cllr Bob Ward said: "We scored 0.07 and we needed 0.4 to qualify for a crossing

"The summary is that we would have needed five times the number of pedestrians using the crossing or three times the number of vehicles.

"This means we would likely never qualify under this criteria and I doubt any other village along the coast road would ever qualify.

"I did point out that because there is no crossing there, people cross at various different points and if there was a crossing, more people would cross in that area.

"We did not just miss out on the criteria, we were way off.

"I was told there are roughly two pedestrian crossings built per year in Dorset, so even if we did qualify, it would have taken many years to get one."

An application for a SID was also rejected.

Cllr Ward said: "We had a survey at both ends of the 30mph zone and neither reached the threshold.

"We missed the threshold by a sizeable margin."

"For an SID there is nothing more we can do.

"Our best chance now is looking at a 20mph zone.

"I was told that in a survey, Dorset Council does not consider there to be any speeding problems along the entire (coast) road."

Cllr Lisanne Mealing added: "There was some seriously fast speeding cars, some of the speeds recorded were horrendous.

"Unfortunately there wasn't enough of them."

The main part of the village has a 30mph limit however at the eastern end past the Texaco garage it goes up to 40mph and past Beach Road it turns to 50mph.

The council agreed to pursue an application for a 20mph zone in the village.

Cllr Mealing said the application would include reducing the 40mph zone between Texaco and Beach Road to 30mph or extending the 20mph zone to Beach Road.

The application was supported by Dorset Councillor for the area, Sally Holland.

Cllr Holland said: "Nationally, there is a push to 20mph and so it may be a better time to do this now."