NOISE from the M27 and M3 motorways blights the lives of many residents living in the Eastleigh constituency, according to Conservative parliamentary candidate Conor Burns.

That is why the Tory hopeful is making "quieter motorways" one of his five local priorities in a bid to book a seat at Westminster.

"If elected, one of my first acts will be to see the minister responsible and to talk to the Highways Agency about getting a definite date to have a new quieter surface laid to reduce the noise misery that so many local residents have to live with," he says.

Mr Burns wants current concrete stretches of the M27 and M3 re-laid with a new modern porous surface where the motorways pass close to densely populated areas.

He said: "The issue of motorway noise is a hugely important one to me. I can hear the M27 from my bedroom at night and in the summer- time when I am holding barbecues.

"The M27 blights the lives of a lot of people in the Hedge End, West End and Bursledon areas, as does the M3 in Chandler's Ford and parts of Eastleigh."

To back his claim, professional sound engineer Steve Gosling took sound level readings from the Moorgreen Road bridge over the M27 and recorded 86dbas.

He said: "If that was a factory and people were standing there for eight hours a day there would be a significant danger of their hearing being impaired."

He added that similar readings above the motorway at Chilworth - where the road had a porous surface - had shown a 50 per cent reduction in noise.