Serious traffic jams are on the increase in Essex.

New figures released by the AA show that London and the South-East bear the brunt of the most serious delays.

The number of incidents and delays have increased dramatically over the last two-and-a-half years.

According to the AA's "gridlock guide" there were 110,352 incidents causing delays between January and March this year compared with just 70,000 in the last quarter of 1996.

In the South-East, the AA recorded almost 45,000 incidents in the first quarter of this year - up 12,000 on two years ago.

The worst single incident so far this year was the flooding of the North Circular Road in London which caused chaos for three days.

Nine of the top ten gridlock incidents in the country happened in the South-East - three of them in Essex.

An overturned lorry at the M25 Brentwood junction caused havoc after the road had to be closed while the HGV was recovered.

The incident scored a gridlock rating of 177 (out of 200), making it the third worst incident in the county.

Just behind, at fourth, was an eight-hour jam when the M25 at Epping was closed after an accident.

And the M25 at junction 28 at Brentwood was blocked for more than 12 hours on March 19 after another lorry overturned - the jam was rated the eighth worst in the country.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.