TOWN Hall chiefs at Warrington want to ban residents from parking outside their own homes – to improve the free flow of traffic entering and leaving a big housing estate.
The borough council is proposing to make an order banning parking throughout the full length of Sunflower Drive – the main access road to the Saxon Park Estate, off Forrest Way at Sankey Bridges.
Anyone who wishes to oppose the order must do so in writing by July23.
A council spokeswoman said the Saxon Park housing estate was approved on the understanding that residents would park their vehicles in dedicated spaces provided for each property.
The layout of the development was designed so that the main access road – Sunflower Drive – would be free of parked vehicles to enable the safe flow of two way traffic to occur.
However, since the residents moved in, investigations had revealed parking was occurring on Sunflower Drive, instead of within the spaces provided to the rear of the properties.
Such parking was causing forward visibility issues and affecting the free flow movement of all vehicles entering and leaving the estate.
She added: “The council consider that the introduction of waiting restrictions – no waiting at any time – within Sunflower Drive, would improve the free flow movement of traffic entering and leaving the estate.”
Objections or other representations should be sent to Rebecca Davies at the Legal Services Section, Quattro Building, New Town House, Buttermarket Street.
TOWN Hall chiefs at Warrington want to ban residents from parking
outside their own homes - to improve the free flow of traffic entering
and leaving a big housing estate.
A ban on parking outside your house?
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Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
15 Comments
What the council does not realise is there are not enough parking bays at the rear of the properties in Sunflower Drive therefore we have to park on the roadway. Are they going to let us know where excess vehicles and visitors to our homes are meant to park? I think there are roads in Warrington such as Hood Lane that have worse “traffic flow” problems!
This proposal would just cause a problem on Snowberry – which would be worse as this is narrower and is the access road to the carpark. Am sure the residents there would not be happy with at least ten cars parked along it. There are never more than 3 cars driving along Sunflower at the same time – how can this be classed as a ‘traffic flow’ problem?
I regularly visit Saxon Park and I can’t believe the ignorance and selfishness of certain people who live on Sunflower Drive. These people park their cars on the access road to the housing estate, narrowing the width of the road to a single file one way street, containing a severe blind bend.
When people bought a house on Sunflower Drive they were told that their parking spaces were located at the back of their house in a designated car park. Instead, they insist on parking along the narrow access road to the estate at the front of their houses.
Although I agree with GRo in that there are rarely more than 3 cars travelling along this road at one time, it only takes 2 cars to have a head on collision and only 1 car to run over a child due to the obstruction of the drivers view of the road.
I can guarantee that one of the owners of these nuscience parked cars will object to this decision to the detriment of the rest of the estate, which is a shame, given that on the whole, the people of Saxon Park appear to be thoughful, fair and resonable. It’s only a matter of time before a serious accident happens and the finger of blame will only be pointing in one direction.
The “finger of blame” as you so nicely put it CCC will not be on those who park in Sunflower Drive, but the mindless motorists who believe it is okay to speed around the estate without due care and attention. I’m afraid I have never had any visibility issues nor heard of an accidents in the drive despite the bend in the road.
You do not seem to want to address JBo’s valid point of where the residents of the drive are meant to park their vehicles as the carpark is already full. Do we tell our friends and family to park in Snowberry or just tell tham not to bother visiting our homes?
I have not once seen “mindless motorists” speeding around the estate without due care and attention SLT. I agree that safe driving is a key aspect of road safety, however, safe road conditions are equally important and I really don’t believe that the parking on the Sunflower Drive corner can be classed as safe. When buying a home, the issue of parking is surely just as important as the number of bedrooms. You wouldn’t dream of buying a one bedroom house for a family of four, so why buy a house with insuffient parking spaces? The implication that it is “friends and family” that park in the road is simply not true. On every visit I have made to the estate, it has been the same culprits causing the nuiscence, and I have a feeling these are not “friends and family”. This leads me to believe that people have either bought a house with more cars than spaces, or that there is an empty car park around the back while owners block the access road to the estate out the front. Please could you let me know which situation is correct? The only solution to this problem is to introduce the above mentioned “no waiting at any time” restrictions. This way, instead of 95% of the Saxon Park residents being unhappy about the Sunflower Drive problem, only 5% (i.e. the residents of Sunflower Drive) will be unhappy that they can’t park in the road. Please don’t let your parking issue continue to be a problem for the rest of the estate…
CCC, if you are only a visitor to the estate and assuming you don’t live there, what is your problem with people parking in Sunflower Drive? If you don’t have to live there then it’s not really an issue for you. CCC, I do not think it’s your place to question the number of people who live in the homes in the estate, you do not know what people’s budgets and situations are when they purchased their properties or how situations change over time. The developers have basically not provided the houses on Sunflower Drive with enough car parking spaces, period. They built the car park and not driveways in order to levy a monthly service charge – a cash cow for Wimpey’s. We were never told we could not park on the roadway. If you want examples, our neighbours have a two bed home with one parking space where are they meant to park both vehicles and entertain visitors? We have two spaces, two vehicles where do our friends and family park? Therefore, to answer your question yes the car park is regularly full and no there are not enough spaces. I also doubt 95% of Saxon Park has a problem with parking, more like 0.1%! I also do not think the majority of people within the estate would be so petty to try and come up with fanciful health and safety issues that do not exist in a road. With regards to mindless speeding motorists, if you do not live in Sunflower Drive then how would you know how fast people drive?
i think that over the past 6-9 months more cars have parked on sunflower than ever before. No matter what time of the day you are always met with a car or cars coming at you on the blind bend.
It’s just one of many things that need to be addressd on saxon park,,, it goes back to only having one access route to the estate…. promised one thing and got another from Wimpey.
If you guys are paying maintenance for the parking why not use it?
Is this why we got a letter from wimpey a while back regarding double yellows on the estate?
I always use my car parking space – the issue is not alway people being lazy or ‘ignorant’ or ‘selfish’. There are not enough spaces, and FYI any empty spaces belong to people – we cannot park in them. Should visitors now park randomly around the estate? Sunflower drive is not a ‘narrow access road’ – it is far wider than Snowberry, which is where you are going to get visitors parking if this goes ahead.
CCC’s comment:- ‘When buying a home, the issue of parking is surely just as important as the number of bedrooms.’ I bought a house with one space – do I have to buy one with three just in case I get a couple of visitors?
I agree with LCM that the issue is having one access road – this needs to be finished/ a visitor carpark needs to be built rather than implementing something which is just not practical. (Two new 3 storey houses have recently been built on the only extra parking spaces near the showhome)
The real issue here is WBC allowing for all of these new estates to be built that have parking hidden at the rear of the house (Chapelford etc).
They are looking for a picture perfect road that has no cars etc however this is not possible if you do not have additional parking available for visitors etc.
What happens if I invite CCC to my house for some quality 1 on 1 time :o) is he/she going to have to walk or or maybe he/she could park out side of his/her friends house further in to the estate.
WBC need to do something about this before they allow for the houses to be built.
I would be interested to see any information that WBC have on the “issues” that people currently have.
I Agree
Is it just me or is the path on sunflower drive unecessarily wide!?!?…actually the road in itself is not even narrow If people stuck to the speed limit (which they dont) the parking on sunflower drive would not be a problem and accidents wouldnt occur. You cant tell me that if people were going 10mph around that bend there would still be accidents!!….no chance!!….people who live in the 2 bedroomed houses on sunflower drive have 1 allocated parking space…do the council now just expect me to sell one of our cars? CCC your a mentalist!!….when we bought our house we were never told that we wouldnt be allowed to park on sunflower drive and would have to park both our cars and our visitors cars in the one allocated parking space we have!!…when we bought our house we were told there would be another access road to the estate…this would massively reduce any traffic problems!!…this whole situation would be happier for everyone if the road was widened but as usual the council want the cheaper way out of this balls up they have made…lets face it the whole layout of the estate especially around sunflower drive is ridiculous and should never have been approved by them in the first place….if this is the best idea they can come up with to rectify this situation they clearly havent been to saxon park and assessed the situation properly. Lke JBO said there are far far worse roads in warrington with traffic problems much worse than sunflower drive…i.e. the road going down by golden city chippy…anyway im sick of ranting about this situation the fact is the council will do what they want and as usual the minority (the residents of sunflower drive) will lose out…just another reason for us not to be able to sell our property!!…on top of all the other issues, (the tip, the smell, in george wimpey’s words “the beatifully landscaped grassy areas” which are just overgrown with weeds, the proposed extension to arpley landfill which we were told by george wimpey was going to be a golf course…etc etc etc etc…)
Letter to WBC (minus photographs)
There’s going to be some very agree people on the estate if this proposal is passed.
We hereby object to the proposed Traffic Regulation Order, reasons as follows:
1.
The developers have mis-sold the property to us since it was made absolutely clear by Taylor Wimpey that parking the second car on Sunflower Drive would not be a problem. Had the covenants of the deeds been confirmed to us prior to us placing a deposit we would not have purchased the property and we would have invested our money elsewhere.
2.
In the event of the traffic regulations order coming into force, residents with limited parking spaces and their visitors will have no where to park. This proposal will not solve the problem, it will just move the issue further onto the estate and increase parking on Snowberry Crescent, which is the through road to all other streets on the estate from Sunflower Drive.
3.
The photo below is a genuine example of issues already occurring between neighbours from parking in other resident’s parking spaces. The implementation of double yellow lines will only increase these instances and cause ill feeling between neighbours.
4.
We refer to the sentence in Neil Jones’ letter that suggests the proposal will… “enable the safe flow of two way traffic to occur”. As you can see from the photograph below, there is already plenty of room for two way traffic to flow safely on Sunflower Drive. We do, however, agree that there is an issue on the corner of Sunflower Drive (nearside between house numbers 9 to 19). Visibility is restricted when vehicles are parked. However safety only becomes an issue when vehicles come onto the estate and take the blind bend, at speed, without hesitation. Perhaps you should investigate driver speeds on the estate before enforcing this proposal? In our opinion it does not take double yellow lines along the whole of Sunflower Drive to resolve residents concerns.
5.
This proposal will negatively impact the value of the house and the ability to sell it on, which is a direct result of poor estate planning and miss-selling by the developer and by no means our own.
The approvers of the estate plans should take responsibility for any parking issues on the estate and help to rectify it with a more sympathetic approach to the residents affected. Obviously the Estate developers anticipated potential issues by including a covenant in the deeds of all properties fronting Sunflower Drive.
I would ask you to put the following questions to those who approved the Estate plans:
A. Did they consider the impact building apartments instead of the proposed houses would have on the flow of traffic in and out of the estate?
B. Did they take into consideration the average number of cars per household (1.4) when approving the parking plans?
C. Did they consider the impact of only having one entrance and exit onto such a large estate? Homeowners were promised there would be more and no doubt this is the root cause of this whole problem!
D. Why are the public footpaths on Sunflower Drive so wide? The pavements on either side of Sunflower Drive are in excess of 2.9m wide, with high maintenance and unnecessary grass verges.
6.
As you can see from the following photographic evidence, parking is a problem throughout the estate. If restrictions on Sunflower Drive are implemented, instances of parking on pavements will no doubt be higher, increasing the risk to pedestrians.
To conclude our objection, photographic evidence in this letter confirms there is limited restriction to the flow of two way traffic on the majority of Sunflower Drive and the proposed traffic regulation order will not resolve parking issues on the estate.
Please consider the views of the people who will be most impacted by this proposal before making your final decision. The residents of Sunflower Drive only have a small voice against the 300+ homes on this estate who may be campaigning for this to happen but I have no doubt that there are alternative recommendations and compromises that can be made before such tactics are employed.
May I suggest the state of the road surface all around the Saxon Park development is improved prior to even considering parking restrictions. The raised grids and uneven road make the journey around the develpment more of a nuisence than the parked cars do.
Also, the roads leading to the development need to be cleaned more often due to the overflowing wagons dropping loads etc!
3 cars at anyone time? I think someone needs to look again. There are always more than that and the road is cut to single traffice where ever they are!
Just a quick note for everyone, you should not be banned from parking outside your house. eeven if you have a parking space. the solution to this problem and to avoid the possibilty of getting killed by a huge blue smelly wagon, the road ove the railway should be opened up to the public as over the past few weeks in been unpassable over forrest way
the entrances should be look at without delay there is also an action group thats been setup without the consent of the residents ??? what a shables