Cornwall Councillor Andrew Long has called on the Highways Agency and Cornwall Council to take urgent action to improve the main A38 trunk road through South East Cornwall to support economic regeneration in the region.

Cllr Long, who is Mebyon Kernow's Cornwall Council member for Callington and the party's economy spokeperson, said: 'Cornwall has historically been ignored by central government when talking about infrastructure improvements.

'The south east of the county has been especially hard hit with little or no work being done to improve the main A38.

'There are numerous accident hotspots along its length from the Tamar Bridge to Bodmin and, while money has been spent on the A30, the A38 has been left to scrape around for crumbs of funding and this has had a devastating effect on economic development in the south east of Cornwall.'

Cllr Long stressed that as the Highways Agency is currently consulting on improvements to the network, it was important that Cornwall Council 'shouts loudly' for real capital expenditure on the A38.

'With the new EU funding programme starting next year, we need to have a timetable for improvements to the route so we can encourage new and growing businesses to locate in South East Cornwall,' he said.

The call followed a presentation to councillors in Liskeard on the Economic Development White Paper and Development of the 2014-2020 EU programme.

The Highways Agency consultation is due to end this week.