Yarmouth's Conservative prospective Parliamentary candidate Brandon Lewis has added his weight to the campaign for major improvements to the A12 Gapton Hall roundabout.

Yarmouth's Conservative prospective Parliamentary candidate Brandon Lewis has added his weight to the campaign for major improvements to the A12 Gapton Hall roundabout.

Mr Lewis, who has been running petitions both on his website and on the 10 Downing Street site urging the Highways Agency to address the issue, warned that unless a permanent solution was found, the worrying toll of accidents was likely to increase at what had become a notorious bottleneck.

He said: “Since 1994 there have been 76 personal injury accidents on the roundabout and in 2006 this figure hit its highest level for eight years.”

The agency has agreed next year to introduce 'intelligent' Mova traffic lights, which can automatically change timings in response to where the traffic flow is heaviest.

However, Mr Lewis said the £600,000 scheme was a government attempt to save money with a short-term solution instead of a more radical one, such as a flyover bridge.

He said: “We know that more houses are going to be built in the future which could render the current improvements obsolete. I am asking the various Government departments involved in this decision to consider the long-term and invest today to make this junction as safe as it could possibly be.”