I AM responding to the headline letter from Robert Readman (Daily Echo, July 27) entitled ‘Bad planning from council’.

The headline couldn’t be further from the truth and Mr Readman is badly informed in the statements he makes.

The highway works currently being undertaken on Terrace Road at the Exeter Road junction are associated with the new £50 million Hilton Hotel development.

They are not related to the former NCP car park site, which itself has never been owned by the council, and which is being developed by L&G as a multi screen Odeon cinema and restaurant complex.

The works on Terrace Road include a new access and egress layby in front of the Hilton Hotel, revised traffic islands and new traffic signals.

At the planning stage the council had a meeting with the bus operators to discuss the least disruptive traffic management measures for bus services during the highway works.

To enable the works it was necessary to impose a restriction on bus movements turning right out of Exeter Road for services heading towards Poole for a three week period.

It was agreed that the best course of action was to temporarily move the stops for these services from Gervis Place into Westover Road so that the buses could loop back via Hinton Road and Bath Road to rejoin their route with minimal disruption.

The highway works are progressing well and will be completed well before the air festival.

I am sure that this looks like very good planning by the council to any fair minded person.

JOHN BEESLEY

Leader of Bournemouth council