A BREAKAWAY faction of the City Council's cabinet has written to the County Council to say they favour ditching the Western Bypass and backing the Northern Route.

This latest turn of events comes in a week of high drama with the County Council deciding on Thursday whether to keep the controversial bypass as its number one road building priority.

A recent MORI poll of local people has revealed that marginally more people support the northern route (44 per cent compared to 42 per cent) and that only in Morecambe and Heysham West is the Western Bypass the favoured option.

This latest and unexpected move by the majority of the city council's cabinet could finally spell the death knell for the Western route, which has come in for a lot of recent criticism.

In the letter the Liberals, Greens and Tories unite to advise the county council to: "Adopt the Northern route as the preferred route for the Heysham M6 Link, rescind and carry out no further work on the Western Bypass, proceed with a full environmental appraisal of the Northern Bypass together with a new bridge upstream of Salt Ayre, compare the Northern Bypass with an optimised non-road building option and develop more substantial proposals for sustainable measures to reduce congestion caused by local journeys within the urban area."

Leading Tory, Cllr Roger Mace explained: "There is no more important issue locally than the M6 road link and this letter is very significant. It is signed by a majority of the cabinet and better reflects the district as a whole in preferring the Northern route for the bypass. Procedural matters in cabinet failed to allow full and proper discussion of this important issue but we were determined that the majority view was heard."

Lancashire County Council's cabinet will decide today which route to put forward to Government for funding.

The council had previously preferred the Western route which gave access to the Luneside Industrial Estate and was thought to be more popular with the public.

Another new factor in the equation is that access to Luneside could be provided by a new bridge at a location close to Salt Ayre sports centre.

Co Cllr Jonathan Sear added: "It has got to the stage where it is clear that the Western Bypass cannot be justified. The Green view is that the Northern Bypass is unlikely to be justified either, but in order to reach a conclusion on this County Council officers need to be allowed to get on with proposals for dealing with the vast majority of traffic, which is made up of people making short journeys such as the school run."

"If the County Council cabinet tries to cobble together a case for the Western Bypass on Thursday it will be writing the longest suicide note in history. It will also be wasting huge amounts of council taxpayers money and condemning local residents to more years of inaction on Lancaster's traffic problems."