A former Carlisle councillor says a slip road should be created to ease traffic congestion at the new KFC drive-through on London Road.

Abdul Harid believes there is also a case for creating a slip road at the McDonald's drive-through which is due to open further north on London Road in the next few months.

Mr Harid had been a Labour councillor for Currock since 2007. Following the creation of new wards, he stood in Botcherby and Harraby North earlier this month but was not elected.

He said: "I have lived on London Road for 24 years. I use the road every day. On KFC's opening day the tailback was back to St Nicholas Gate.

"I visited residents during my campaign in April. They raised concerns about the prospect of traffic from KFC.

"I did speak to my county council colleagues at the highways authority. Highways and KFC should have consulted the public more.

"St Nicholas Gate Retail Park was in my Currock ward. When Asda moved in, there was traffic congestion down London Road. A filter lane was created. They widened the junction at Brook Street and that solved the issue.

"Highways could still look into it and see if they could create a similar lane at KFC."

McDonald's drive-through will be on the former J&W Watt goods yard.

"McDonald's should consult Highways," said Mr Harid.

A county council spokesman said: "The council is aware of the issue [at KFC] and we are monitoring the situation. We would advise motorists to allow extra time for their journey or find an alternative route until things improve.

"All developers are required to demonstrate through the planning process what the impact of their development will be.

"The developments that have a significant impact are required to mitigate their impact.

"The demand on the junction is currently higher than is likely to be the norm so some traffic disruption is evident. The installation of a filter lane is not considered necessary at the moment because the traffic demand is expected to reduce."

The likely impact on traffic is among the things considered by Carlisle City Council's planning committee when deciding whether to approve developments.

They may recommend measures such as a slip road before they will approve an application. This was not the case for KFC or McDonald's.

The county council spokesman added: "Sometimes it’s not clear until after it's up and running that the impact on traffic is worse than expected, and so they retrospectively have to consider what can be done to mitigate the issues.

"As it stands, the city council has not asked the county to install a slip road [at KFC] or any further measures. The collective thinking is that once the initial excitement has passed, the traffic will calm and we hopefully won’t need to disturb the road layout further."