Two residents of Knutsford Road have appealed to local councillors to help prevent dangerous parking which has been an ongoing issue for several months.
Dr Stuart MacIntosh and Kevin Fisher attended the Wilmslow Town Council meeting earlier this month to raise their concerns about the parking situation on Knutsford Road, close to Fulshaw roundabout.
Stuart MacIntosh said "Over the last few months cars have been increasingly parking in front of what used to be Royles and is now Travis Perkins and down towards Donkey Lane, in front of my property and my neighbours property.
"The situation became so bad that it became impossible for us to leave our drives without people having to go and stand in the road and stop the traffic."
There has been ongoing correspondence between the residents, Councillor Gary Barton, Cheshire East Highways and the police. As a result of these discussions Cheshire East Highways have placed white H bars in front of the driveways, which were designed to improve visibility of vehicles leaving the roundabout.
Stuart told councillors "Unfortunately all it has done is remove one car from the situation, we can't see the roundabout at all which is about 100 metres away.
"We both have young families. My wife is having to nose out every morning with young children in the back and we're just waiting for an inevitable accident which we're hoping we can avoid."
He added "In discussions with Cheshire East Highways and Cheshire Police everyone has agreed the situation is not acceptable and dangerous but the issue we're stuck upon is budget and for any parking restrictions to be imposed it would require budget to go through the legal process to do that, so we respectively request the councillors' support in trying to secure that budget and move things forward."
Kevin Fisher said "It's literally an accident waiting to happen."
Gary Barton explained that Wilmslow Town Council do not have the funding in their budget but he is lobbying to get extra funding to address this particular issue which is expected to cost in the region of £4-5000.
Councillor Martin Watkins said "We will make our representations to Cheshire East about the need for this to be addressed but that is really just about as far as we can go because we can't force Cheshire East to change its budget on highways but what we can ask them to do is make sure when they are preparing the budget, which they will be doing now for the next financial year, they should be taking this as something that should be done."
Wilmslow Town Council agreed to write to Cheshire East Highways on the resident's behalf requesting parking restrictions on this stretch of Knutsford Road.
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
When CEC had the surface of Knutsford Road replaced last year the contractors did not replace all of the yellow lines; they repainted shorter lengths. Despite having come back, after I raised the matter, and adding extra yellow lines they are still not as long as they were before the resurfacing work. It was thanks to the efforts of the Late Alderman Alan Barnes and Joan Barnes that these lines were installed originally, after several very near misses.
How has a figure of £4-500 been arrived at for a few metres of yellow lines?
Would it be possible to extract the Traffic Wardens from their bolt-hole in the centre of Wilmslow to stick some penalty notices on the offending vehicles?
The second issue is the cars parked along Knutsford Road are causing an obstruction to the highway - again the police should be out issuing more tickets to those causing the obstruction.
If the drivers of these cars are employed by Travis Perkins, the company should be providing parking facilities within its site. It is a matter of care in and for the community.
I would also mention the parking on Gravel Lane as you turn from Knutsford Road.
Every day there are cars parked on both sides here reducing traffic to one lane to creep through. Dangerous all round.
Adding to yellow lines cannot possibly cost thousands.
The main contractor has a duty of care and needs to be held accountable; members of the public are being put at risk due their actions.
Wagons being parked either pre or post loading often block the new entrance on Alderley Road, forcing pedestrians onto the carriageway.
It's time that the CEC do positive action, as this is surely in breach of the planning restrictions & conditions imposed.
At the least, dangerous & illegal parking offenders should be ticketed.
Indeed it is an accident in the making. Where are the police and the traffic wardens?
Why do ignorant drivers of cars find it reasonable to park on the pavement........easy answer, their vehicle is far more important & valuable to them than a human's life!!!
We need the police & traffic wardens to be visible!!
I was held up by the Cycle race around Britain the other week, to be informed by the van driver behind me that Cheshire East had just spent £1,500.00 with his firm power washing the council buildings in Sandbach, and there were others, which had the same treatment, and obviously more money was spent.
This question was raised by another reader in the last news round up, ie what did CE spend to stage the Cheshire sections of this race??
When a council blows £8m on a failed attempt at forming a 'third party', TUPE based IT company. Then says there isn't £5k for a simple road traffic order and line painting exercise, it just leaves you speachless.
When CEC decided to apply for De-Criminalised Enforcement, the Police-employed 'yellow peril' (traffic wardens) were replaced by CEC empoloyee's, trained as Civil Enforcement Officers (CEO's).
I understand that at time of DCE application, CEC failed to request 'footway parking' as a Contravention, so not enforceable by CEO PCN, only Police FPN for 'obstruction of Highway'.
The aforementioned white H bars have no legal status.
Enforceable yellow line parking enforcement requires rel TRO to be published locally and in local Press for min period of Public consultation.
I have yet to see a CEO patrolling outside the Town Centre.
I suggest a little random beat planning could encompass Chapel La, Moor La, Gravel La, Knutsford Rd, Water La, Buckingham Rd, Bourne St, Pownall Park during SYL restricted parking periods.
Yet we employ a professional planning department, at our expense, that is supposed to forecast growth, change, trends and suggest accordingly to benefit all. All I see is one off, isolated decisions, compartmatilised, not focusing on the impact to the wider community.
Where are the strategists within the planning department, the forward thinkers? Anybody can say 'computer says yes'.
Can CE introduce similar for the masses of commuters?
Also, stop agreeing contracts with senior council staff with incredulous redundancy terms - CEC is not short of money, it is just totally incompetent and embarrassingly inept at using our money for our benefit (rather than theirs). Graham - if you're right (and I don't doubt you) maybe the folk of Cheshire should lobby to be taken over by GMCA - not a merger though, we don't need to the incompetent CEC folk any more - just don't let them take redundancy!