A councillor has taken aim at the Portswood bus gate, branding the cost an "insane amount of public money" after the cost of the scheme so far was revealed.

As of March 19, a total of £1,098,982 had been spent on the Broadway ATZ and mobility hub.

Councillor Jeremy Moulton has slammed the project as costing an "insane amount" of money and said it is "widely hated by local residents".

A budget of £500,000 was allocated from the Department for Transport’s Transforming Cities Fund solely for the trial elements of the project.

But of the £1million total, £527,437 alone was spent on the trial itself.

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Cllr Moulton said: "This money could have been spent on making Portswood Broadway a more attractive destination and bus journey times could have been improved by camera enforcement to stop parking at bus stops.

"Instead a scheme has been forced onto the local area, making the lives of residents on roads like Brookvale Road a misery, putting school children at Highfield school at risk and damaging local businesses."

Councillor Eamonn Keogh responded by telling the Echo that the council "already undertakes camera enforcement at bus stops across the city" using fixed and mobile cameras.

Some £288,719 was spent on the design of the trial and final scheme, £641,044 on implementation and £156,479 on monitoring and evaluation.

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In emails seen by the Echo, the council also revealed the full list of third party suppliers involved with the scheme.

This includes Catchmonkey Design for consultation material, Envervo for street lighting, Floow and Streetwise for traffic counts and Balfour Beatty Living Places for design and construction.

They were however unable to confirm how much money had been paid to each company due to "commercial sensitivity".

Southampton City Council's response

Cllr Keogh said: “The council already undertakes camera enforcement at bus stops across the city using mobile and fixed cameras and this includes the stops within the Portswood Broadway, which had fixed cameras introduced earlier this year at the same time as the bus gate cameras and has seen over 1,000 penalty charge notices issued to people misusing the bus stops.

"The cameras are one of the permanent measures that were funded by the Portswood Project trial."

Cllr Keogh also said that the transport team is "in regular contact" with schools across the city as the council works to address road safety and transport issues.

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This is achieved through school travel planning and the council's Safer Routes to School programme.

"We are working with Highfield CofE Primary School to understand and respond to the issues raised," he said.

"This has included extending the 20mph speed limit to include the area around the school and increased parking patrols to address reports of inconsiderate parking locally.

“We appreciate the feedback that we continue to receive through the experimental traffic regulation order consultation from local people and organisations and we continue to review the comments made alongside the functioning of the different aspects of the trial and make adjustments to the measures.”