DESPERATE motorists faced with horrendous hold-ups caused by new lights at Hampshire motorway junction are resorting to using a service station to jump the queue.

Hundreds of vehicles are coming off the westbound M27 and using Rownhams services as a fourth lane to cut out about half a mile of traffic.

Scores of people have backed calls from a top motoring organisation to demand the Highways Agency remove the lights on the roundabout junction of the M271 and M27.

The number of signatures added to petition on the Number 10 website calling on the Prime Minister to intervene has rocketed to more than 200 in just a few days. One worker at the Roadchef services, who wanted to remain anonymous, told the Daily Echo: "Sometimes you can't even cross the slip road. It's just car after car.

"We've got container trucks, supermarket trailers, you name it, you've got it. Even the police are coming through."

The worker added: "Some of them are pretty dangerous drivers. I've phoned the Highways Agency to complain about it. There have been quite a few near misses."

The filter lane from the M27 on to junction 3 was replaced with traffic lights as part of works in March this year. Since then drivers have inundated the Daily Echo with hundreds of complaints about long queues and traffic delays as vehicles heading to Southampton join the M271 from the westbound M27 carriageway.

Nigel Humphries, Association of British Drivers spokesman, described the chaos as "one of the worst examples in the south".

He called the Highways Agency "incompetent and disrespectful" towards the public, and urged that motorists lobby for a U-turn.

A spokesman for the Highways Agency said he had not received reports of queues as far back as the services caused by the traffic lights aside from the "phasing problems" in the first week of installation.

He advised motorists not to use the services as a rat-run and pointed out an eight-year-old sign at the junction warning "queues were likely" on the M27 because it was a busy road carrying about 120,000 vehicles a day.

He reminded motorists that 15 months of widening work is planned to start in the spring next year. The spokesman said there were no plans for the lights to be removed. However, a standard review of the junction, which occurs after the installation of all new lights, would report this summer.

A spokesman for Roadchef was unavailable for comment.