ON-OFF traffic lights at a busy roundabout on the Poole-Bournemouth border have been causing traffic chaos since Tuesday.

Queues of commuter traffic built up in all directions at peak times on the approaches to the Mountbatten roundabout at Wallisdown.

And the traffic light problem seemed to spread through the borough yesterday with a power cut at Fleetsbridge and build-ups of traffic at Penn Hill, due to roadworks.

At some times during the three days of traffic light troubles at the A3049 Wallisdown Road junction with the A348 Ringwood Road the lights were stuck on red for extended periods of time while at other times they were not working at all.

Some frustrated motorists had to queue through the nearby Canford Heath estate to get to the junction while traffic built up through Wallisdown and along the Ringwood Road to Bearwood.

Engineers from Siemens were on site working on the problem and Borough of Poole put out a message on social media saying the problem was resolved on Wednesday.

However the lights got stuck again and Siemens engineers were back at the junction on Thursday, installing a fixed timer while they investigated the issue.

One regular commuter said two evenings in a row there were no traffic lights on at all late in the evening. "They were totally out and people were going really gingerly through the junction," he said.

Thursday's problem turned out to be with the vehicle detection system, which Borough of Poole said was resolved by early afternoon.

John Rice, engineering manager, Borough of Poole, said: “Since Tuesday we have experienced problems with the traffic lights at Mountbatten roundabout. These have led to some traffic issues in the local area but, working with Siemens, we have now resolved the issue and traffic has returned to normal.

"On Thursday the issue related to a problem with the vehicle detection on the lights and this has now been rectified. We would like to thank motorists for their patience while we worked to resolve the issue.”

On Thursday morning a power cut at the busy Fleetsbridge junction put the multiple sets of traffic lights controlling the roundabout out of action for a time but they were back on by lunchtime.

And at Penn Hill one driver described it as, "chaos from Tesco all the way through" as motorists were held up by stop-go boards instead of traffic lights as the council patched up sections of road.