DEVIZES could be overwhelmed by traffic because the district council has not made enough provision for an increase in traffic in its local plan, a public inquiry heard last Thursday.

The Trust for Devizes, the organisation that seeks to protect the town's heritage, submitted an objection to the transport policy in the plan, saying that the town was in danger of descending into total gridlock.

General John Page, who recently stood down as chairman of the trust, told inquiry chairman Robin Muers that the new homes being built in the town would put an "intolerable strain" on local transport unless something was done to address it in the plan.

He was particularly concerned about the new island in the Market Place, where most of the bus stops had been positioned after their removal from the area outside the shops on the north side of the square.

He said: "The new island is an improvement and is just about all right. But I have seen traffic trying to turn into Snuff Street, cutting across in front of buses and I fear someone's going to get killed.

"In five to ten years, when another 1,000 houses have been built in the town, how great a need for buses will there be and how are they all going to use that island?"

The trust's suggestion is demolishing the unloved and unlovely former Co-op building, currently the home of the One Stop store, and build a very shallow building with an archway leading to a bus station in what is currently the car park behind it.

The lack of free parking space also concerns the trust, particularly the loss of 57 spaces in the Market Place during the recent changes. General Page suggested that a multi-storey car park built over the existing Station Road car park would increase parking capacity in the town without too much environmental impact.

General Page said that the lack of parking was the main reason for people choosing to shop elsewhere, even being prepared to make the 40-mile trip to Cribb's Causeway at Bristol where there were 7,000 free parking spaces.

Jeff Ody, the present chairman of the trust and a former consultant on motoring and traffic matters, told Mr Muers that Devizes was unique among towns of its size in the West Country in not having a bypass or some kind of orbital road to take traffic out of the town centre.

He said: "Devizes is unreasonably badly served with roads. It is a classic crossroads town with traffic converging on the Green."

He said that Kennet District Council was wrong to ignore the benefit of some form of orbital capacity to overcome the crossroads situation, but understood that the local plan, being mainly concerned with housing, could not discuss the possibility of a ring road.

Replying on behalf of Kennet, Peter Reynolds, the council's transport policy officer, said there was more than enough capacity on existing town bus services to cope with the expected rise in the population, at least for the next five years.

He said: "From the many surveys we carry out, we are told that the car remains the preferred option for getting about. As far as bus use is concerned, frequency of services remains an issue and better marketing might help.

"Better vehicles would lead to a higher quality service and it is possible to make the developers stump up towards the cost of providing new vehicles for the routes serving their estates."

He agreed with the trust that the reorganisation of the Market Place had led to a loss of 50 per cent of parking spaces, but said this was only a 'blip' on the long-term traffic strategy for the town. He said that it was planned to convert enough long-term parking spaces to short-term ones to make up for those lost in the Market Place. This is due to happen in the next 12 to 18 months.