TRANSPORT minister Andrew Jones is to meet local MP Marcus Fysh next week to discuss the safety of the Ilminster bypass.

The main A303 road around Ilminster has been the scene of countless accidents and a number of fatalities over the years – with a succession of incidents in recent weeks.

The latest person to die as a result of an accident on the bypass was 43-year-old Yeovil mother-of-two Trudi McHugh, a medical secretary at Yeovil District Hospital.

She died on July 18 just a few days after being involved in a car crash on the bypass, while earlier this month 28-year-old Laura Barbosa-Garrido from Spain also died following a three-vehicle crash.

Yeovil MP Marcus Fysh, who represents Ilminster, has listened to calls from local people asking for an urgent review of safety on the bypass.

He will be meeting Andrew Jones, parliamentary under secretary of state at the Department of Transport, next week at the bypass to discuss possible solutions.

“I have been asking for updates about possible safety work on the bypass section and would like to bring forward solutions if there are any that make sense,” said Mr Fysh.

“The Minister is coming to look at it with me in the first week of August.

“I will certainly be telling the minister and Highways England about the dangers of the bypass in the current configuration.”

There are complex plans in the pipeline to dual the entire A303 – although much of the early preparatory work is looking at the proposed Stonehenge tunnel and nothing will happen until after public consultation in 2017.

There are also plans to improve the A358 from Ilminster to the M5 junction at Taunton and the A30 from Southfields Roundabout at Ilminster down to Devon.

But it would appear that works for the Ilminster bypass are further down the pecking order – especially after the Highways Agency said three years ago that it was “one of the safest sections of the A303”.

Mr Fysh has vowed to that he will ask the transport minister to look more closely at the bypass given its recent surge of tragic incidents.

People have spoken about dualling the bypass with more speed cameras and increased patrols by police.

“The long straight on the Ilminster bypass is particularly scary,” said Mr Fysh. “I wouldn’t consider squeezing in an extra lane unless there was a central barrier and a 50mph limit like you see in narrow semi-urban dual carriageways with no hard shoulder.”