A £30,000 project to bar cars from a Worcester street is "embarrassingly" behind schedule due to a mystery hitch.

Transponders have been installed in buses and emergency vehicles so that bollards buried at the mouth of Angel Place can be lowered remotely. But the signals fail to work.

At first, the city council believed the fault was because software installed in buses - programmed to lower similar bollards in Cheltenham - was unable to work in Worcester.

Later, the flaw was put down to signals beamed from buses turning right from The Cross being too weak to trigger the mechanism.

"The firm that installed the bollards has insisted the system was working when it was put it, and that something's happened since then, such as electrical interference," said the council's principal engineer, Andy Walford.

"But we're saying there's nothing that we've done which would have made the system fail.

"No one seems to be able to explain the mystery and negotiations are continuing about the problem and who should pay for it to be improved. We're now running embarrassingly behind schedule."

Mr Walford said he was reluctant to say more, due to the project's commercial sensitivity.

The bollards - which are designed to keep all traffic except buses out of the street - were embedded at the junction near McDonald's 18 months ago.

The city council, which claimed the move would curb accidents at the busy spot, intended to check the apparatus before it went into operation during February, 2000.

No one was available for interview from Warrington-based ATG Access as the Evening News went to press.

Plans for a similar network at Lowesmoor has been put on hold while the wrangle continues.