Okehampton Town Council has voted to back the removal of the traffic lights in the town centre on a trial basis.

Town councillors debated their response for Devon County Council’s public consultation on long-term congestion problems for an hour and a half at their meeting on Monday night.

While there were reservations with the proposals to remove the traffic lights at the junctions with Market Street/George Street, Mill Road and Barton Road — in particular concerns about pedestrian safety — councillors decided it would be better to at least try the radical idea put forward by highways engineers to break deadlocks at peak times of the day. They voted to ask county council engineers to trial disabling the traffic lights for long enough to assess them in different conditions.

Cllr Jan Goffey said she was wary of responding with ‘unsure’ to the question on what effect removing the traffic lights would have, one of the options in the county council online consultation.

‘I’m a little concerned that if we say we are not sure the county are going to wipe out everything we say. We have waited so long to have something done, I really don’t want us as a town council to give an impression that we are negative about anything that they are willing to try,’ she said. ‘We are not traffic experts, we are all groping in the dark here, but we desperately want to see something done.’