Oswestry’s mayor has offered traffic bosses the use of her mobility scooter in a bid to highlight the need for traffic lights at a “dangerous” junction in the town.

Councillor Margaret Chamberlain is challenging Shropshire Council highway engineers to attempt to cross the Salop Road/Middleton Road junction on her scooter after plans for traffic lights on the junction were put on hold.

At a meeting of town councillors last night, Councillor Chamberlain said pedestrians were being put at risk because of the lack of an official crossing and dropped pavements.

Furious town councillors clashed with Shropshire Council’s leader Keith Barrow at the meeting following last month’s decision.

The mayor, who needs her scooter to get around Oswestry, said: “I will happily lend anyone my mobility scooter to see for themselves what it is like trying to cross from Mid- dleton Road to Roft Street.”

The former Shropshire County Council had said work would start this year on the traffic lights. But the new unitary authority says it wants to see the effect that any new supermarket development, which is planned for the town, might have on the junction.

Oswestry town councillors invited Councillor Barrow to last night’s development and planning committee meeting. The town has offered to underwrite the £200,000 needed to pay for the works.

Councillor Gareth Jones said campaigners had been calling for lights on the junction for 25 years and had been promised that the lights would be put in and money had been put aside for the scheme. He said the council was going back on its promise.

But Councillor Barrow said it was the former council that had made the promise.

He said: “Whichever supermarket development is given the go-ahead it will have an effect on the junction. We will be able to ask the developer for a contribution towards the traffic lights and so to waste public money when we don’t have to is not going to happen.”

Councillor Barrow pledged to get traffic engineers to look at the problem of the pavements at the junction in response to the mayor’s offer and to look at putting in a pelican crossing.

By Sue Austin