CHRISTCHURCH council has vowed to take more care on consultations following problems with a controversial bike park in Highcliffe.

Despite a full consultation taking place earlier this year on the possibility of a mountain bike park at Chewton Bunny, the scheme was pulled at the eleventh-hour due to unforeseen complications over the land ownership.

The consultation received a successful 995 responses but proved to be a waste as the land ownership problem has still not been sorted.

A mountain bike park and other improvements will now not be made at Chewton Bunny although the scheme could be resurrected for a different location in the future.

Councillors at Wednesday’s community services committee urged the officers to take more care to ensure this would not happen again.

Cllr Sally Derham-Wilkes, chairman of the community services committee said: “We were really quite upset to find that we did get ourselves in that position.

“Now we would like to make sure in the future we are definite about how we go about things and build up projects more carefully.”

Council leader, Ray Nottage added: “I think that the role of ward councillors is really important and I think that their involvement at an early stage is absolutely necessary.

“I would not like to see us go through this process again.”

Matti Raudsepp, head of leisure and open spaces at Christchurch council said: “I would like to say that this is a fairly unique problem. The key thing is that land ownership is not taken for granted.

“It was assumed by officers to be in our ownership but that part of the land was not investigated as closely as it should have been.

“In future one of the first things that will take place is proper and thorough land ownership investigation.”

The consultation proved divisive with 46 per cent of respondents opposed to the scheme and 40 per cent in favour.