Parish councillors from Chilton and Great Cornard – backed up by Sudbury town councillors and MP Tim Yeo – urged that a second planning application by Brett Aggregates for a quarry to include a roundabout on the A134 turned down.

Frances Jackson, a Cornard parish councillor, said the council had rejected the first quarry proposal and the addition of a roundabout had not changed its mind.

She said: "The A134 is an increasingly busy road and is getting to be more or less an accident black-spot.

"With more and more people coming to live in the area traffic is going to increase on the roads. This is also a beautiful area of Suffolk and a quarry could blot the landscape for ten years or longer."

Sue Brotherwood, Sudbury's town clerk, said: "We have supported the police on this decision. They told us a roundabout would not make an already-dangerous stretch of road any safer so we voted unanimously on that basis."

In March councillors on Suffolk's planning committee threw out Brett Aggregates' first application to build a quarry between Sudbury and Newton due to fears for road safety and impact on the environment.

In the four years up until October 2007 there were 52 casualties - 14 serious or fatal – on that stretch of the A134. An action committee made up of councillors has been set up to fight the proposals.

Peter Clifford, chairman of Chilton Parish Council, said the environmental impact would affect the entire area.

He said the quarry would generate 20,228 vehicle movements a year and most would be 20-tonne lorries.

He said 65% of these movements will be backwards and forwards through the villages to Ipswich and Colchester. "Thirty-five per cent will go westwards towards Melford and Sudbury, some going through Sudbury town centre, through Ballingdon to Halstead, Braintree and beyond."

Tim Yeo, MP for South Suffolk, said police and the head of Suffolk County Council's highways department have advised against placing this excessive burden on the A134 and surrounding road network.

"The A134 is already a well known accident black-spot and when it is closed due to an incident of any kind the impact on local congestion is immense," he said.

He added that the quarry would amount to an unacceptable level of industrialisation in a semi-rural location.

A final decision on the roundabout and quarry application will be made by Suffolk County Council later this year.