The Road Haulage Association (RHA) is pleased at the decision of transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin to approve the £111m spend for the M6-Heysham link road and a further £49m for 25 ‘congestion-busting’ local roads schemes.

"This is great news for Morcambe and the surrounding area", said RHA Northern Regional Director Steve Biddle.

"The new link road will complete the connection from the M6 at junction 34 to the Morecambe Bypass; a junction that has been a source of congestion for years. Journey times will improve and it will provide a real boost for the local economy and will also mean new jobs.

"The Prime Minister visited the area last week to formally announce that work will begin on the link road in early January and even he admitted that he had been stuck in traffic coming in from Lancaster".

The transport secretary highlighted that £266m Local Pinch Point schemes have now been approved and that work would start on many of the new schemes next year.

He also said that local highway authorities estimated that the 25 schemes would support "more than 200,000 jobs and around 150,000 new homes".

The areas winning funds include Birmingham, Blackpool, Bracknell Forest, Cheshire West and Chester, Cornwall, Coventry, Cumbria, Darlington, East Riding of Yorkshire, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Leeds, Leicester, Newcastle, North East Lincolnshire, North Somerset, Northamptonshire, Oldham, Oxfordshire, Salford, Southend-on-Sea, Stockport, Warwickshire and Wolverhampton.