HOPES of fresh progress towards a bypass of villages along the busy A56 through West Craven have suffered an early setback.

The report of a county council working group set up to look at major road schemes from 2006 has knocked the A56 scheme further down the priority list. Meanwhile residents in Ormskirk will be celebrating after a bypass for their town was given priority over the A56 scheme in the county's proposed new Local Transport Plan (LTP).

The A56 scheme would see a series of bypasses from the end of the M65 at Colne virtually to the A59 near Broughton. They would take traffic out of the villages of Foulridge, Kelbrook, Sough, Earby and Thornton-in-Craven, all sliced in two by the busy A56 trans-Pennine route.

In the county council's current LTP, running from 2001 to 2006, the A56 scheme shares joint second place priority with the Ormskirk bypass. Top priority went to a planned link road between the port of Heysham and the M6 motorway, but that scheme has run into major planning difficulties that have stopped it dead.

Recently a working group of county councillors was set up to look at priorities for the county's next LTP, due to start in 2006. Its work included a public consultation, but now the group is recommending that the Ormskirk bypass takes priority over the A56 scheme.

Despite its difficulties, the Heysham-M6 link, which would take traffic out of Lancaster, remains the council's top priority in the working group's recommendations. But the Ormskirk bypass in now given sole second priority, pushing the A56 scheme down the list into third place.

Usually just one major road scheme is included in the LTP, so if the A56 scheme is not given a higher priority it could be set back by a further five years, with work not starting before 2011.

In the meantime, the A56 grows busier, with increasing levels of heavy goods vehicles using the route and heightened concerns over road safety for people living along the route. Parish councillors in Earby have warned that it is only a matter of time before Wysick Hill is the scene of a major road accident.

West Craven's Liberal-Democrat county councillor David Whipp said he was disappointed by the latest news.

"Up to now, a bypass for the A56 communities has been in joint second place behind the stalled Lancaster scheme. If this decision sticks, our project will be in limbo.

"At the working group, none of the Conservative councillors supported our bypass as the top priority and only one Labour member supported my Colne colleague Alan Davies in putting it in first place. The odds are stacked against us, but this is only the first part of the decision making process. We will beaver away to get a better result."

The Transport Working Group's report will now be considered by one of the county council's scrutiny committees before being sent to a meeting of its cabinet. It will be up to Coun Jean Yates, cabinet member for Highways and Transportation, to have the final say on which schemes are submitted for Government funding as part of the next LTP.