PLANS for more bus lanes in North Somerset are on “pause” after an outcry over disruption people say they have caused.

North Somerset Council will be reviewing its plans to install more bus lanes and putting the rollout on pause until November.

It comes after warnings from the public and councillors that the lanes are causing more trouble than they are worth.

The council has been installing a host of bus lanes across the district over the last year — starting with the Long Ashton bypass — after it was handed one of the largest amounts of “bus service improvement plan” (BSIP) funding in the country by the government.

But Hannah Young (Clevedon South, Labour), the council’s executive member for highways and transport, told a full council meeting on Tuesday April 16: “Over the next few months the only bus priority scheme being delivered will be at Wood Hill, which is part of the Congresbury congestion scheme.

“We won’t be starting any other BSIP priority works before November at the earliest and taking a pause to review the remainder of the infrastructure programme as a whole, reflecting on feedback, and considering how we can change our approach to BSIP capital delivery to address the concerns that have been raised with us.”

Councillors Patrick Keating (Blagdon and Churchill, Liberal Democrat) said to the council: “While we can be rightly proud of the success of North Somerset in gaining record funding for bus service improvement pan, residents are concerned that existing and proposed plans for bus infrastructure/bus lanes are overengineered for the amount of buses that we have circulating on our roads now and potentially in the future and the disruption caused by the bus lane construction outweighs the benefits.”

He called for the council to only spend the funding on “practical, effective, and value for money schemes” and called for other schemes to be “scrapped.” Dr Young said: “That’s quite emotive language; we will be reviewing”.

But she warned: “There was quite an extensive process of bidding to government for that close-to-record pot of money — £47m — that North Somerset received. And government doesn’t hand out that money with no reason.”

Ash Cartman (Long Ashton, Liberal Democrat), who had been an executive councillor when the council won the funding in 2022, said: “We’ve been playing an epic game of bus lane “Supermarket Sweep” as a council. I don’t think we expected to get on the show, but when we did we got a lot of money in our pocket and the clock was ticking.

“Officers disappeared around North Somerset with their trolley but as they turned up into ward, I think we found they put the wrong bus lanes in the trolley.”

Plans for a bus lane on the Queensway roundabout in Weston-super-Mare may still be decided before November, however, as Dr Young said they needed to avoid the roadworks happening at the same time as work on Winterstoke Bridge and the Banwell Bypass.