5:00pm Thursday 18th March 2010
BOLLARDS installed to stop people parking on a grass verge alongside a busy main road into Kendal have outraged local residents.
Seven three-foot high bollards have been installed by Cumbria County Council outside 130 Windermere Road, to prevent four families without driveways from parking their cars on a patch of grass they have been using for ten years.
The council put up the bollards after a neighbour complained the parked cars obscured her view and made it dangerous for her to access Windermere Road.
But mum of three Kirsty Martindale thinks the council’s solution is now putting her family in danger.
She said: “My eldest daughter is partially sighted in her left eye and I have two other children under five. We will now have to park much further up the road which is extremely busy and far more dangerous for us. Where we parked before, my daughter could get out of the car safely onto the verge which is shielded by a layby.”
Mrs Martindale’s husband Simon said he was annoyed the council had not consulted the families affected.
He added: “We could have all had a sensible discussion with the people that are doing things to affect our day-to-day lives.
“It really feels like a knee jerk reaction to one person’s complaint and means that we might now have to park half a mile away.”
Neighbour Shaun Addison said: “The council have just moved the parking problem further away.”
Leader of South Lakeland District Council Brendan Jameson said no formal consultation was needed to install bollards and that the county council made the right decision, with advice from the police and high-ways authorities, as the parking was damaging the grass verge.
He added: “I find it disappointing that residents can’t see they were behaving in a destructuve manner.
“If they chose to buy houses without parking spaces it isn’t my responsibility to find them parking.”
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