Residents demand action on parking near County Ground (From This Is Wiltshire)

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Residents demand action on parking near County Ground

7:00am Wednesday 8th February 2012 in News By David Wiles

Coun Derique Montaut and resident Scott Jordan in Shrivenham Road where football fans park for home games

FED-UP householders near the County Ground are calling for an end to football fans parking in their road.

Residents in Marsh Farm Lane say up to 40 cars enter their estate during home games, blocking garages and driveways and parking in residents’ spaces.

They say emergency vehicles would not able to reach their homes after a match as fans drive off en masse via the sole access point on to Shrivenham Road.

Residents say Swindon Council has failed to address their complains over several years and now a petition containing 61 signatures from people in Marsh Farm Lane and Shrivenham Road has been handed in to the authority.

They are calling for double and single yellow lines or a residents’ parking scheme. They also want bushes to be planted on the green to stop parking there.

Petition organiser Lynton Elcocks, 51,said: “The council should be doing something about this. They’re ruining our area. The environment is being ruined. It’s making life a misery for a lot of the residents, it’s dangerous, it’s not fair and we want something done.”

Mr Elcocks, a father-of-two, said Swindon Council had recently put double yellow lines in the entrance road to Marsh Farm Lane to stop vehicles blocking the access, but the authority said it could not afford to put lines elsewhere in the road.

He said Swindon Town FC had offered to pay for a steward to prevent the nuisance parking, but the council said this would be unfair on streets with a similar problem.

Scott Jordan, of Shrivenham Road, whose garage is reached via Marsh Farm Lane, said: “I have got a sign on my gate but we still have instances of people parking there, which means you can’t get out.

“And if there’s ever a need for emergency vehicles to get down there they wouldn’t be able to.”

Coun Derique Montaut (Lab, Central), who received the petition on behalf of the council, said he had asked officers meet residents, and said he would also push for a site meeting on a match day.

A Swindon Council spokesman said: “We have been aware of this problem for some time and have been working with the police and the football club to try and resolve it. It is only a small minority of drivers who are parking selfishly but we don’t underestimate the difficulties they are creating for people.

“We will be meeting residents to hear what ideas they have and we will be going with some ideas of our own they might want to consider.

“The club have been working hard to alert fans to the problems of selfish parking, by making announcements on matchdays and by including information in their programmes, and the police have also been enforcing traffic regulations.

“We want to achieve a solution for the whole area – if we just focus on one bit it runs the risk of moving the problem somewhere else.”

Comments(19)

jimmys lovechild says...
7:58am Wed 8 Feb 12

Strike the pose!!