ROADS bosses have been urged to do more to reduce waiting times for drivers at roadworks in West Kilbride - after a councillor caught in the queues said he saw no work taking place at the site.

Road maintenance firm Amey has been carrying out work on the A78 near the Waterside Hotel for several months.

Work began on the stretch of the trunk road between the hotel and Seamill back in November, with the lengthy queues leaving many drivers exasperated.

The firm, which holds the Transport Scotland contract to maintain all the trunk roads in the south-west of Scotland, recently announced that the roadworks, which were originally due to be complete by the end of March, would remain in place until Friday, May 3.

Now one North Ayrshire councillor has written to Amey asking for it to look at ways of reducing the long waiting times being faced by motorists as a result of the work.

In a letter to the company, North Coast Conservative councillor Tom Marshall said: "I have just driven northbound through the roadworks at the Waterside.  The queue is almost one mile long and it has taken me 23 minutes.

"No one is working on site.

"Can nothing been done to shorten the queues and the length of time to complete this job?"

The work is being carried out using 24-hour temporary traffic lights, with long queues and delays reported at peak times.

Access for emergency service vehicles will be maintained throughout the works.

Amey is undertaking essential drainage work on vulnerable flood sites on the A78 between Seamill and the Waterside Hotel, and is now scheduled to complete by Friday May 3.

However, a spokesperson said: "

Unfortunately, the presence of historic utility services has meant a revision of the programme to allow for excavations below these services, and this has been compounded by challenging ground conditions, including a high water table and sand that have hampered the completion of the work. These issues were only able to be identified once the carriageway surface was exposed, and this is why our programme has had to be revisited and extended.

"Work is continuing with installation of a new carrier pipe on the northbound carriageway, including the installation of three new manhole chambers and connections being made to existing gullies on both sides of the road.

"The assets have been re-designed to avoid crossing back over the cluster of utilities in the verge of the main pipeline and gully connections.

"The northbound pipeline has also been upgraded to accommodate the increased flows from the southbound gullies rather than install a second pipeline and associated manhole chambers in the southbound carriageway to address these.

"Unfortunately, there can be no guarantees that further issues will not be identified once the entire pipeline route has been excavated, but at present we seem to have uncovered the potential obstacles."