RESIDENTS living at Soutergate in Ulverston will have a quieter life after Cumbria County Council agreed to limit the number of lorries using the road.

The restriction of vehicles more than 2.2 metres (seven feet, three inches) wide on the B5281 at Soutergate in Ulverston and its junction with the A595 at Gawthwaite is designed to prevent lorries using the road as a shortcut between the A5092 and the A590.

Ulverston Mayor Norman Bishop-Rowe told county's South Lakes area committee meeting that lorries with no commercial business in the town were creating noise and exhaust pollution which was making like a misery for residents and potentially damaging the 17th Century houses along Soutergate, King Street, Market Place and Queen Street.

Large vehicles with legitimate business in the area will still be able to use the road.

But members of the committee deferred plans to impose similar width restrictions to control HGVs on the A595 between Grizebeck and Dalton.

Liz Vaughan, from Lowick, told the committee that restrictions on the A595 would push an extra 350 vehicles a day along the A5092 through Lowick. Roly Saunders, a well-known local haulage boss who runs his business from Spark Bridge on the A5092, warned that if the A595 was restricted, it would force more vehicles to use its dangerous junction with the A5092 at Greenodd and that the A5092 was already "a dangerous road".

The committee agreed to look again at width restriction on the A595 in six months' time.

In the meantime, the committee is to urge CCC's cabinet to consider improving a "sub-standard" length of the A595 between Dalton and Grizebeck.