MORE funds need to be spent on controlling the speed of cars in Salisbury, a committee of councillors has said.

Salisbury City Council’s planning and transportation committee was considering a request for a 20mph speed limit outside Manor Fields Primary School on Monday and said there was a “gross under-provision” of such limits in the city.

Wiltshire Council introduced new policies through the area board last year that mean all speed limit requests have to come from parish or town councils and in Salisbury only the two sites considered most urgent will be put to the area board and Highways department.

Several members of the committee said they had voiced their concerns that this is not good enough.

Cllr Matthew Dean said: “The resources they were going to put behind this was in no way adequate for the demand. It’s not really fair on the residents that don’t benefit from these 20mph areas. I think it’s a pretty poor deal considering the size of our geographical area.

“I don’t think we should consider requests in any competition with others. We should consider each application as it is submitted to us, as we would any planning application, and then lobby the area board and Highways because I don’t think they are being reasonable. For the size of our city, it’s a gross under-provision.”

Cllr Tom Corbin added: “I voiced my disdain for the process at the time. We haven’t got the ability to do what we want to; to really show our support in the way we would like to.”

The city council has seven applications requesting 20mph speed limits but the Manor Fields proposal is the first that has gone to the committee. Councillors decided not to support the application because they believe the area needs a part-time speed restriction at the school’s busy times. They voted to ask for more information to be brought to their next meeting.