NO CHANGES will be made to bays in Frideswide Square before they open to the public, despite bus companies’ fears their vehicles will not be able to pull out safely.

As revealed in Saturday’s Oxford Mail, concerns were raised that bays in the £5.8m revamped square had been made too small for buses to safely pull out into traffic.

But instead of changing the layout to deal with the safety fears directly, Oxfordshire County Council said it would instead monitor the bays in the months after they open by the end of next month.

The local authority said a “safety audit” would show if any changes were needed to the Frideswide Square bays, while an anonymous source at the site said that any adjustments would be costly.

They said: “It will cost a lot of money to sort it out. For starters, they’re going to have to get rid of the plants that are by the bays and move the bays back to fit the buses in.

“It’s going to be an expensive project and it’ll take a long time.”

But council spokeswoman Emily Reed said: “Work on the square is not yet complete and we are confident that we can address the concerns by working together with the bus companies.

In addition to the discussions, the bus bays will be monitored and be subject to a safety audit in the first few months of their operation. This audit will identify if any action should be taken. No further work on the bays is proposed at this stage.”

In the meantime, bus companies have called for an urgent meeting with the council to discuss how to make Frideswide Square workable for all involved.

City council board member for planning, transport and regulatory services Alex Hollingsworth said immediate cooperation between the bus companies and the council was needed to resolve any problems.

He said: “It’s important that the bus companies and the council work together very closely to sort out if there is a problem or not and to resolve it as quickly as possible if there is one.”

Bus Users Oxford chairman, Hugh Jaeger, raised concerns that it would be too late to rectify the problems raised by the bus companies. He said: “The cement is barely dry and there are already problems, you just couldn’t make it up.

“If the bus bays are not long enough, we need to know if there is enough room to lengthen them as soon as possible.

“But I’m not sure there actually is enough room to lengthen them, which would be a bit of disaster.”

Work on the square began in February 2014.