TRAFFIC lights at a danger junction could help ease congestion on a major approach to a North Yorkshire town.

Councillors are being asked to approve the spending of £150,000 to improve the A61 Leeds Road junction with Pannal Bank and Follifoot Road at Spacey Houses.

While highway engineers have warned that lights would mean inevitable queues of traffic on the main approach to Harrogate from the south, they said every effort would be made to minimise delays.

"In-bound queuing at peak periods will also assist congestion management on the road nearer to the town centre," said traffic management engineer Chris McGonigle.

Local people have been calling for safety measures at the staggered crossroads for years and several alternatives to lights have been drafted but rejected as either too expensive or unlikely to have the desired effect of reducing the number of accidents.