THE new city council leader said the People Friendly Streets scheme is something that should be revisited "in the future", as the current low traffic zone "wasn't working".

This follows the news that the scheme is being "suspended indefinitely" from the end of the month.

Wiltshire Council, announcing the decision today (November 20), said it follows a meeting with city councillors, who refused to confirm support for the scheme moving forwards.

Get more reaction to the decision

Salisbury City Council leader Liz Sirman and deputy leader Simon Jackson met with members of Wiltshire Council yesterday to discuss the scheme, which had officially launched on October 21. 

Referring to the 71 per cent of businesses that asked the city's Business Improvement District (BID) to request Wiltshire Council lifts the scheme until the New Year, Cllr Sirman told the Journal: "[The scheme] needed to stop, we had to listen to all these people.

"We as a parish council do not have huge powers, but we need to listen and respond to what the public are saying. We had so much opposition to [People Friendly Streets] from businesses."

She added: "It just needs to be more thought out. It wasn't working.

"I was concerned right from the beginning, the city centre is a difficult place and the businesses felt so strongly about this too. And then our MP and the BID spoke out, it couldn't carry on how it was."

Cllr Siman said a similar scheme should be considered "in the future" with more of a consultation process.

She added: "We just want consultation and that is what we didn’t have. We all need to have a say so we can have a pedestrianised area that we are all happy with.

"We need to think about the smaller independent [shops] now, we don’t have that many and we need to keep them going and support them."