VILLAGERS desperate to fix 'the worst pinch point in the country' have suffered a setback in their calls for a bypass and council support.

Residents living near a half-mile long bottleneck on the A595 at Grizebeck, near Kirkby-in-Furness, are fed up with incidents.

The A595 Action Committee called on Cumbria County Council's Cabinet to support its campaign.

But while councillors expressed support and sympathy, they explained that budgets are tight and a bypass highly unlikely.

Afterwards, campaigners said they were 'disappointed' and believe the council should be doing more to lobby government.

The A595 committee secretary Robin Cornah told councillors that the road suffers from half-a-mile of continuous bottlenecks and members believe it to be the 'worst pinch point in the country'.

An estimated nine miles of the A595, or 22 per cent, is within South Lakeland, and 3.5 miles in the Furness area.

Mr Cornah said most standard two-lane carriageways have a width of 7.3 metres or over 23ft.

But measurements of the contentious stretch found that the entire width of the road is narrower than a single lane or less than 3.65m or 11.97ft, said Mr Cornah. The road is used by Sellafield traffic along with large road freight bound for Cumbria's west coast.

"It is one of the most dangerous roads in Cumbria and we need to make it safer and improve journey times," said Mr Cornah.

Cllr Keith Little, the portfolio holder for transport on the council's Cabinet, said the road was the longest in Cumbria and that the council supported the 'principles' of the action committee.

But he said that from the new financial year in April, the county council would have just £10 million to spend on all of Cumbria's roads but the cash was already committed. "We are extremely sympathetic with your situation but we can't justify spending limited resources on schemes with no real prospect of being funded in the future," he said.

Cllr Stewart Young, council leader, said: "We used to get funding for major transport schemes but now we don't. Please don't interpret that as not being supportive of your aspirations - we fully understand the difficulties of this route. All we can do is to continue to lobby everyone hard. It's in our thoughts - don't give up on it."

Campaigners were advised to take up the issue with the Government's Transport Select Committee.

Afterwards, Mr Cornah said: "At presentations to local committees - South Lakeland, Barrow and Copeland - there was vigorous discussion and considerable support. This did not happen at Cabinet and is a disappointment."

"I would have preferred that the Cabinet explicitly agreed to send this to the Transport Select Committee. We will research how we might approach them to see if this is possible."