TWICE in three days Poole’s landmark bridge has ground to a halt, forcing disgruntled motorists to turn round and use the old lifting bridge.

Yesterday the £21.6 million Twin Sails Bridge failed to lift as scheduled at 11.30am and it was not operating again for two-and-a-half hours.

On Sunday the bridge was out of action for an hour and 45 minutes from 12.30pm, caused by the same fault.

“It’s really frustrating,” said rep Tim Frew, who was caught on the Hamworthy side trying to get back into Poole yesterday.

“Just when you are thinking it’s ‘yes’ and then it’s ‘oh no’.”

He waited in a queue of around 20 cars before he was told by a workman that the bridge was broken, and then turned and rushed to get over Poole Bridge before its scheduled lift. He said there were 10-15 cars waiting on the town side at the time.

Borough of Poole workmen coned off the Twin Sails Bridge Approach road, put up a “road closed” sign, the bridge road barriers were down and red warning lights flashed as yellow jacketed workmen were visible working underneath the bridge.

It is understood the fault is in the control system, telling the bridge to lift the triangular sails but stopping before it does. This leaves the barriers down across the road, and traffic unable to cross.

A Borough of Poole spokesman said: “The bridge reopened to traffic at around 2pm yesterday afternoon.

“It would appear a fault occurred with a control system associated with the bridge's lifting sequence.

“The council is working closely with its contractor to rectify the fault and a software engineer will be on-site today to carry out further investigations into the cause of the problem.

“We would like to apologise to road users and boat owners for any inconvenience which may have been caused by yesterday's temporary closure.”