RESIDENTS of an Upper Parkstone road claim they are plagued by speeding drivers and lorries whose sat navs tell them it is a through-route.

Uppleby Road is among the few main routes off Ashley Road not to have traffic calming.

Resident Bill Wise appeared before councillors to say he had known people hit 70mph as they drove down the hill from Ashley Road.

And he said the council should take the road into account when it considered plans to spend up to £1million improving Ashley Road.

“We’ve had people come down that hill and they must be doing 70mph,” he said.

“The pavements in this road are probably some of the narrowest in Poole.

“When people are walking by with double buggies, they can’t get past and they have to go out in the road.”

He said people also had to walk in the road because dustmen left bins on the pavement rather than returning them to people’s driveways.

His wife Gill said the road had missed out when a 20mph zone was introduced around Branksome Heath and Sylvan schools nearby.

“We tried for a lower speed limit.

“The council said they couldn’t do it all the way up the road. They didn’t think it was necessary. There weren’t enough accidents,” she said.

She said she was concerned about children using the entrance to the play area near the brow of the hill.

“They say there’s a barrier but children can still run around the side,” she added.

Mr Wise recently told a meeting of Poole council’s Newtown and Parkstone area committee that any moves to prioritise public transport and pedestrians in Ashley Road could mean more traffic down Uppleby Road.

Near neighbour Lorraine Summers said the road was heavily used as a rat-run by people escaping traffic queues on Ashley Road.

“It’s getting worse since they dug the gas pipe up in Ashley Road,” she added. Newtown councillor Brian Clements said the council had difficulty balancing demands for traffic calming with drivers’ desire for easier journeys. He said most of Parkstone’s traffic calming scheme dated from the time Dorset County Council ran the area’s highways.

“At the time it was supposed to be the biggest in Europe but they did cut back on it towards the later stages because it seemed to have worked,” he said.

“There’s a low rate of injury accidents in the area which has to be welcomed but some roads that were originally intended to be calmed never have been.”

Steve Dean, senior traffic engineer at the Borough of Poole, said: “The improvement works being undertaken on Ashley Road are being funded by central government to support sustainable means of travel between Poole and Bournemouth including walking, cycling and buses.

“We appreciate the concerns raised by Mr Wise but it would be difficult to introduce traffic calming measures in Uppleby Road as part of this scheme as it falls outside the scope of this funding. However we will consider this issue when we review traffic calming features in the future.”