A VETERAN roads campaigner is calling for a bypass for Fairlie to be drawn into the new North Ayrshire Council local development plan.

David Telford, who has been a community councillor for 20 years, has long been calling for the bypass line to be kept as a future option.

The original line from Kelburn to Southannan was given over to housing - but Fairlie Community Council maintain that it should still be kept around the village as a whole.

David previously told the News he believes that drastic changes need to be made to the A78 or someone will be killed.

He has called on Traffic Scotland to make the road through Fairlie single lane to prevent another crash like the one that devastated the village in 2013, when Catherine Bonner died after a lorry crashed through her home.

He says that a combination of narrow pavements and regularly passing lorries is an 'accident waiting to happen'.

In a letter to Alistair Gemmell, Strategic Planning Manager, David said: "With all of the proposed current and future planning activity at Hunterston, can you advise if NAC's next local development plan will contain an aspirational bypass around the village of Fairlie?

"You will recollect that, when the original land that had been reserved for a bypass around Fairlie was removed from the Local Plan some years previously, NAC’s Planning Department were of the view that there would be no difficulty in reinstating a new bypass further to the east of the village at a future date.

"It would be useful to be able to consider your views on this important point."

The bypass line around the village has been long talked about ever since the 1960s when Hunterston A was built, with the community council regularly campaigning for the new road to be built.

David said: "The land was reserved for years in the local plan

"How can you have major industry at Hunterston and have a small neighbouring village so close by? A bypass is the only sensible option if North Ayrshire Council are serious about Hunterston as an industrial site - they have to invest in the infrastructure.

"Maybe the Scottish Government can help fund it or some developer with lots of money who is investing in Hunterston.

"We have already seen a Dalry bypass being built and a three towns bypass. A Fairlie bypass would help protect people using our wee narrow Victorian streets.

"It should never have been taken off the table in the first place. With all this talk about major industry coming to Hunterston, surely the village needs some support with improved infrastructure around it to compensate for all the additional traffic that will generate."