A trial is currently taking place to look at changing the sequence of light changes in Diss in a bid to alleviate traffic congestion.

The county council's highways department is looking into the possibility of altering the timings of the lights at the pedestrian crossings either side of the Morrisons roundabout in Victoria Road in a bid to move traffic through a bit more quickly and prevent the bottlenecks that block up the road.

South Norfolk councillor Keith Kiddie said the study was trying to determine what effect reducing the amount of time the light was on red would have on vehicle movements, while also ensuring pedestrians would not notice any difference while using the crossing.

The problems with traffic congestion have been exacerbated by the presence of a pedestrian crossing on one side of the roundabout close to the methodist church, followed by the roundabout then another pedestrian crossing immediately after the roundabout on the Park Road side close to Fine and Country estate agents.

However, Mr Kiddie said: 'On Victoria Road there are lots of initiatives, but in reality there is no major fix to it. There is no silver bullet that will solve all the problems. Each little bit that we do is incremental.'

A number of other surveys have taken place to look into ways of improving the situation in the road, which becomes particularly congested during peak hours.

In May, Diss town councillors Ann Hughes and Mr Kiddie joined the town's mayor Neil Howard in visiting Victoria Road to look at possible ways of improving the situation.

Options included creating extra Keep Clear zones at the junction with Skelton Road and the Morrisons mini-roundabout or potentially changing the traffic light signals.

The idea was to try and find improvements that would be within the county council's budget, as the authority did not have enough money to carry out major changes on the road due to cutbacks to alleviate the national debt.