What could be done here?

I hate them and won’t cycle round them. I’ll do a 2-lane if I have to, depending on the road and degree of traffic. That looks like a huge barrier to cycling right there, except for the very confident cyclist

The ideal answer is probably something along Dutch lines – the Fietsberaad example bank has lots of roundabout solutions http://www.fietsberaad.nl/index.cfm?lang=en&section=Voorbeeldenbank&mode... – the basic segregated model is here http://www.fietsberaad.nl/index.cfm?lang=en&section=Voorbeeldenbank&mode...

They’re pretty unknown in the UK, although it looks like one of the London cycle superhighways has a degree of segregation (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgeezer/5961894461/ – it’s not clear from the picture where the right of way would be).

Back in the real (UK) world, a be a bridge or tunnel bypassing the roundabout in one direction would be more the sort of solution UK traffic engineers would be comfortable with, although they are expensive. I imagine there’d be very few cyclists on the ring road anyway from the look of it, but people coming to and from town and having to cross the ringroad might benefit from a cycle bridge. Here in Dumfries we’ve got a fab one that got funded because it connected a deprived area with the rest of the town – I think it was EU money.

I have noticed that the roundabout will now have full time signal control on key exits. Some UK roundabouts have peripheral shared use pavements with toucan crossings over the exits, such as the A3 / M25 interchange here. What you will notice, however, is that to use the crossings one has to use two crossings to use the path on the inside of the roundabout and then two more to get back to the outside, because only one of the slip roads exiting the roundabout has a crossing.

Worth looking at is this Dutch roundabout with a peripheral 2 way cycle track with traffic lights. The roundabout appears to be an old fashioned traffic circle rather than a modern roundabout with spiralised markings. Note that one direction is wider than the other, because you would only go clockwise for acute left turns (going clockwise to go straight ahead means going through two more crossings than going anticlockwise). Obviously the directions would be reversed for the UK.

Also worrying is the section of bus lane nearby that uses the outside lane of the dual carriageway, as this arrangement is likely to be dangerous for cyclists whether they use the left hand lane and drivers overtake closely to avoid using the bus lane, or they use the bus lane and buses undertake them. There is no point to it being on the right because it doesn’t lead to a right turn; so all it does is confuse drivers and put cyclists at risk.

Bob, as a starting point I’d query the officer involved on what route an 11 year old child will be expected to take through the junction. One suspects that they won’t even have considered it. If you want to try and get the scheme changed go straight to local councillors and the head of the school, don’t waste too much time with officers.