A disabled charity manager has supported appeals for the Government to tackle traffic jams on the A27.

A pile-up involving a single-deck bus, car and two vans belonging to charity Scope, carrying 23 disabled people, blocked the main road through Worthing for more than three hours.

The jams follow the Government's decision against multi-million pound plans to improve the coast road at Worthing, Lancing and Arundel.

Scope manager John Watson backed Worthing MPs Tim Loughton and Peter Bottomley's calls for the Government to reconsider the move after three of his members were hurt in the July 21 crash.

He said: "The A27 is dangerous. There's so much traffic coming on and off of it and it's only a single lane through Worthing.

"If anything happens, you have got nowhere to go. The pavements are also very close.

"It definitely needs improvements. We have to go well out of our way to avoid the bottlenecks because you do not want disabled people in hot vehicles for hours on end."

West Sussex Scope, based in Chichester, used vehicles from the charity's Worthing branch to get its members home because the vans in the crash had been badly damaged.

Two male Scope members, aged 28 and 24, who were suffering from shock, and a 26-year-old women who cut her head during the impact were treated at Worthing Hospital and have since been released.

Mr Watson said all the disabled people involved in the crash were "shaken but not stirred" and had made a full recovery but the loss of the charity's specialist vehicles had been a major blow.

The charity has had to hire vehicles to continue taking members on day trips but some excursions have been cancelled because the new vans do not have air conditioning.

Mr Watson said it would take six months for the damaged vehicles to be replaced because of all the special fittings required.

He said: "We have got people with lots of conditions and they cannot overheat.

"If they get caught in traffic jams they can get very uncomfortable that's why we have heavily tinted windows."

The highly publicised South Coast Multi-Modal Study detailed proposals for how road congestion could be reduced along the coast.

It suggested bypasses at Arundel and Chichester and tunnels under traffic bottlenecks at Worthing and Lancing.

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling rejected the proposals but said billion-pound improvements to the M25 and roads in the Midlands and The North could go ahead.

On July 22, Worthing West MP Peter Bottomley called the A27 "dangerous and unpleasant" and said the Government was responsible for accidents which "would have been avoided if the road was safer".