SPEED humps on Pack Lane will be ripped up if Conservatives regain control of Basingstoke council in June's elections, according to a leading Tory.

County and borough councillor Phil Heath has said that removing the controversial scheme on Pack Lane would be his top priority.

Residents have been calling for the humps to be removed since they were introduced last year.

A petition with 1,742 signatures was handed in to Basingstoke council and Cabinet members will decide whether to carry out £11,000 worth of changes when they meet on Tuesday. The changes would mean less steep gradients on the humps.

However, Cllr Heath said the measures were nowhere near good enough.

Referring to the Conservatives, Cllr Heath said: "The one big angle we have is that we have got elections coming up in June and we have strong hopes of winning back control of the council.

"Traffic-calming needs to be considered. Pack Lane would be the first we would be looking at and I'm sure we would remove the measures from Pack Lane. We would be looking at every single traffic-calming scheme in the town."

It would cost more than £70,000 to remove the humps from Pack Lane and Cabinet members believe that is too high a price to pay.

A council report also points out that the scheme has significantly lowered speeds in the area.

Cllr Heath believes that savings could be made elsewhere in the council's budget and added that the Pack Lane scheme was totally inappropriate for the volume of traffic using the road.