A PUFFIN crossing has riled residents in Ferndown just months after it was installed.

Locals say the Ringwood Road crossing, which cost £85,000, is causing traffic chaos and needs to be relocated to somewhere more suitable.

Last year, more than 72 people living at nearby Homelands House retirement home signed a petition to protest against the plans, but building still went ahead.

Resident Sylvia Bolt said something must be done.

“We campaigned against it before it was installed because we felt it was going to be built in the wrong place,” she said.

“It is a duel passing crossing on a single carriageway, so it’s totally unsuitable for the road. We get a lot of Poole traffic along here, as well as large foreign lorries, boats and parked homes, and they just can’t get through. There isn’t enough room.”

Residents’ surveys have deduced that around 20,000 cars a day travel along the busy road, although official figures say the number is more like 15,000.

“The traffic is horrendous,” Mrs Bolt said.

“We do want a crossing, but this is in the wrong place. One lady petitioned for a crossing near her house in St George’s Court, but the decision was made to put it here. I think the new KFC is the only thing benefitting.”

Among the traffic incidents recorded along the road since the installation of the crossing involved a lorry from Spain trapped for ten minutes.

A lorry with a parked home on the back also became trapped in the morning of December 12 last year.

District councillor for St Leonards and St Ives Ann Warman said she had argued against the proposals.

“I just think it was a poorly-conceived idea,” she said.

“I have got a lot of sympathy for residents. I’m not against things there, as long as they are sensitively and intelligently designed.”