An action group has been formed by people who live close to Newtown Crossroads and are opposed to Herefordshire Council installing traffic lights there.

The "No Lights at Newtown Group" came into being following a public meeting at the Newtown Inn, attended by around 50 people, on Tuesday evening.

Action group spokesman Stephen Morgan, the owner of Newtown Cross Garage, said: "There was a lot of strong feeling there."

Members of the new action group plan to greet Yarkhill parish councillors with placards on Saturday, when they come to the crossroads for a site visit.

At the end of last year, Mr Morgan put together a petition with 1,400 signatures against lights at the crossroads. He fears that his forecourt could be blocked with tailbacks and that vehicles could use his forecourt as a shortcut.

Mr Morgan believes local residents could also find themselves trapped in their homes and face increased fumes from revving engines.

Instead of traffic lights, the action group is calling on Herefordshire Council to narrow the Leominster road at its junction with the crossroads, so motorists can no longer negotiate the junction side by side, obscuring each other's visibility. They are also calling for the visibility of the road junction to be improved in the Worcester direction.

But the view of councillor Rob Manning, who represents the Frome Ward, is that traffic lights should be installed at the crossroads. Newtown Crossroads has one of the worst official accident blackspot records in Herefordshire.

Coun Manning believes that statistics for the Trumpet Crossroads, where traffic lights came on line in March 1999, show the effectiveness of lights.

Since that time, there has been just one road casualty at the Trumpet crossroads, compared with ten at Newtown Crossroads.