MARKET town drivers could face years of congestion if road improvement schemes are abandoned, a council leader has warned.

Olive Brown, leader of Wear Valley District Council, said Durham County Council - the highway authority - needed to do something about traffic build-up in the district's two main shopping centres.

She spoke of the problems in Bishop Auckland and Crook as she and fellow councillors discussed proposals by the county council to abandon road schemes in both towns under its Local Transport Plan - Minor Schemes Review.

She said that nobody had looked at both towns as a whole to work out a traffic system for shoppers and she called for a meeting with the county council to discuss it.

She said: "This council is suffering from years of neglect from the county council. I don't often like to criticise but I have to on this occasion.

"Bishop Auckland and Crook have never been looked at as a whole and traffic gets snarled up. We have managed to come up with a parking scheme for Bishop Auckland but people will not come if they have no easy way of getting to it."

The county council has proposed that minor traffic schemes at Parkhead Bank, near Coundon, the A689 Crook Inner Relief Road, A689 Ireshopeburn, in Weardale and the A690/C96 junction improvement at Willington be dropped.

It also looked at abandoning improvements to the link between Etherley Lane and Newgate Street in Bishop Auckland town centre but has now decided to look at it again.

A spokewoman for the county council said that the schemes had been around for a long time and some were not viable anymore.

She said: "We are reviewing these kind of schemes throughout the county, not just in Wear Valley.

"There are still schemes in Wear Valley that are going forward for review and in addition to that we are spending £8m in the area through the Crook bypass and the West Auckland bypass.''