RESIDENTS' exasperation about a ridiculed road barrier has prompted a village-wide consultation.

Grove Parish Council is planning to ask every household in the village what should be done about the Cane Lane blockade.

The roadblock was installed decades ago after residents complained about cars speeding down the narrow lane between Main Street and Denchworth Road.

But councillors are now receiving a growing number of complaints about cars speeding along the road on one side of the barrier and motorbikes squeezing past it.

Parish council chairwoman June Stock said: "People from Cane Lane were complaining because of cars speeding down and motorbikes coming through the gap.

"Cars go too fast over the bridge so that's why we're looking at potentially moving the barrier to the bridge.

"With the work due to start on the Grove Airfield estate, whatever we do might just be temporary but it will cost a lot, that's why we need to do a village-wide consultation."

The council held a straw poll of several options for what to do with the barrier at its Annual Parish Meeting in April.

The first option of doing nothing received no votes, but so did the option of removing the barrier completely and re-opening Cane Lane to two-way traffic.

Removing the barrier and making the road one-way from Main Street to the bridge and two-way from the bridge upwards received eight votes.

The final, and most popular option, was to keep a barrier but move it to the bridge, which received nine votes at the meeting.

The council is now planning to place a survey in the parish newsletter, Community News, which is delivered to every household in Grove.

Councillor Bill Evans said: "I personally think it could be two-way the whole length, but have differing priority over the bridge.

"When I moved here 38 years ago it was a two-way street from Main Street to Brereton Drive.

"Then Oxfordshire County Council, on the asking of one person, did a travel survey and they reckoned there were 600 to 700 cars using the road an hour.

"The parish council did our own survey and we found about 60 cars using the road an hour, but on the strength of the county survey all of a sudden this thing appeared."

The parish council survey will ask residents to vote for one of the four options already mooted or suggest their own solutions.

Villagers will be given until October 18 to send their response back to the council.

Grove will then have to ask Oxfordshire County Council to carry out any works.