Stop these lorries hitting my house (From Bournemouth Echo)
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Residents fight to get new access road for lorries
4:00pm Wednesday 13th February 2013 in News By Darren Slade, Chief Reporter
TIGHT SQUEEZE: A lorry manoeuveres around a tight bend in Jubilee Road
RESIDENTS hope an end may be in sight to the problem of giant articulated lorries manoeuvring around a small residential street.
They have been campaigning for years for improvements to an access road serving a row of shops in Ashley Road, Parkstone.
Vehicles up to 40 tonnes have to negotiate their way around a tight corner on Jubilee Road – often in reverse – and several have struck a neighbouring house.
Now a stretch of wall has been demolished to make a bigger entrance. And a nearby pub is in talks about knocking down a wall to open up the service road at both ends.
Jeff Williams of Jubilee Road Residents Association said: “The manoeuvring lorries have been a shocking worry. They have hit the end house several times.”
He said the layout of the access had not changed since the 1930s.
Residents have called for a wall to be demolished behind the Churchill pub, so the service road could run all the way to Churchill Road.
Mr Williams said: “The plan proposed by residents eight years ago and repeatedly since is for a through one-way service road with entrance from Churchill and exit from Jubilee.”
Jeff Russell, chief executive of the charity Pramacare – which has a shop backing on to the service road – said: “It’s very important we get this through-road. The environment works against how a charity shop needs to be run.”
Campaigners also want a better road surface and lighting.
Karen Fancini, manager of Coopers on Ashley Road, said: “There’s no lighting down there. I hope it doesn’t take someone to be attacked.”
Anthony Mellery-Pratt of Rebbeck Brothers, agent for the land owner, said: “We have started work to improve the entrance to the service yard and when complete this will certainly improve things for the tenants of the shops and the local residents
“In the longer term, changes to the yard to create a through road will largely depend on the council’s attitude to a planning application that the pub owners are submitting.”
A spokesperson for brewery Greene King said: “Greene King is in discussion with the local council in a bid to join the two roads.”
Cllr Judy Butt, Poole council’s cabinet member for public engagement, congratulated the residents on their efforts: “The community up here are absolutely amazing,” she said.
Jeff in Parkstone says...
4:48pm Wed 13 Feb 13
In the end Dec 2011 with land agent refusing to act, and Poole Council claiming they had no authority in the matter (private land) we sent the whole matter to Health and Safety and it then took their offices to explain to Poole Council they did have authority to require the land owner to make lorry manouevres on and off the land safe for all concerned.
It is then only because we have pursued this issue year after year that finally I suspect the land agent has been required if not forced to make improvements to give adequate access to the service area.
Anyone who knows the land will know it has been left year on end full of pot holes, drains totally blocked, land unfenced, with collapsed walk-ways and the site totally unlit at night pitch black.
This then only goes to show I hope others would agree how totally self-serving land owners and agents can be - we estimate £100,000 a year going to the land owner and agent through leases yet in eight years the agents repeatedly refused to take responsibility to improve the site.
And add to that years of rampant wheel clamping even to the extent of clamping and charging £180 a time the the very business owners who create the lease income for the land owner and agent. One outlet clamped and fined the very first day they moved in.
However in all this a very big thank you to Iceland - they have been great and made every effort from their position to improve matters. But Rebbecks - Mr Mellory-Pratt the agent manager - for business ethics and any sense of community responsibility I would give then a grand zero out of ten. They have known for years the end house was being hit by lorries on their land and did absolutely nothing. And Poole council similarly for seven years zero out of ten. They did near nothing - it took in the end H&S to tell them they did have authority to require improvements.
So thank you Echo team running the "story" - its good but then doesn't this case show so clearly why high streets are in severe decline when you have land lords endlessly taking out and refusing to invest and put back in ... as retired chairman of Tesco said so much in many high streets is quite simply antique medieval ... we are all working against the tide as long as owners take out and refuse to modernise and invest.
Jeff Williams