WE have been less than laudatory in our views on the consultation exercise for traffic in Skipton. It didn't help that the questionnaire seemed to spend six months sitting in an in-tray.

Now the results of 3,000 returned forms have been analysed there is still a long way to go before anything is actually done. More investigations to draw up a strategy will follow and then the consultants will take over, to do more work.

The last effort of consultants cost something in the order of £80,000. They did absolutely nothing about the real issue, managing the traffic, other than attempting to slow it down along main routes into the town. While those measures have their critics, it is likely that they have succeeded in that limited aim.

The real challenge is the lack of adequate car parking in the town, the residential streets crammed with vehicles belonging to commuters and the sheer danger of crossing the road in Caroline Square.

It is interesting that many residents (exact figures have not been supplied) want the High Street pedestrianised. This would make the town centre a more peaceful haven in which to go about one's business on foot.

It will do little though to solve the real problem of why people are put off coming to the town - that finding anywhere to park can take up a great deal of the time set aside for shopping or sight-seeing.