West Midlands traffic: Frustrated residents complain of parents blocking their driveways during school run
A video shows a sign reading, ‘Please do not park over my drive’ erected near the West Midlands school.
Fuming residents living on a posh West Midlands road have complained of parents blocking their driveways during the school run.
Signs have been erected asking parents to leave their cars elsewhere during the morning and afternoon rush.
Residents living in leafy Spetchley Road in Worcester, where the average house price is £555,000, have called the situation a “nightmare”.
Between 8am and 9am every morning, they say dozens of cars cram into the street as parents drop their children off at Nunnery Wood High School, which caters for 1,483 pupils.
The morning rush becomes more chaotic when some of the 1,750 students from nearby Worcester Sixth Form College arrive for their morning classes.
Between around 3pm and 4pm, the same battle for spaces is repeated when parents arrive to pick their kids up and older students drive home from college.
Residents say they’re so fed-up, some are considering moving out of the area in a desperate bid to escape the school run chaos.
Retired Royal Navy engineer Royston Roberts, 82, said: “People have parked on my drive which is never a good scenario.
“You can ask them to move but it’s a civil matter. The police can’t do anything.
“The problem for us is that I can’t get access to the highway or get in or out of home a lot of the time.
“It’s tight, too. It can be very inconvenient.
“I have an older Land Rover and I can’t access my drive because they park so far over blocking it.
“Deliveries are a problem for people on both sides of the road. If you want building materials, it’s impossible.
“You have to work it out for a non-school day or a weekend, which is an inconvenience.
“Students can apparently use the car park at the college, but they’re the worst offender.
“I can’t report them to the school because the cars they are driving are not often registered to them.”
Royston, who has lived on the street with his wife Maureen since 1983, said a suitable parking solution lies just 100 yards across the road in the form of the disused county hall space.
He said: “The county hall has a huge car park 100 yards away. There’s no resolution - zigzag lines and warning people doesn’t work.
“If someone has arrived late, they’ll park their car halfway across the drive. They’ll dump their cars, but it's on both sides of the road - it's chaos.”
Resident Michael Harding, 79, said the hearse carrying his late wife was forced to reverse down the street after being blocked by double-parked cars.
He said: “My wife had terminal cancer for two years and she sadly died in April this year.
“The hearse picked her up from the family home.
“It got around the corner but it couldn’t get through as some idiot was parked on double yellow lines.
“We had to turn back, it made us late for the service. Both cars had to reverse back down the road and turn around.
“He was parked on double yellow lines on a bend with another car parked across from it.
“Sometimes I cannot get my car off the drive, they park way over the drive.
“I virtually have to park onto my neighbours drive to get off, fortunately he’s kind enough to let me.
“As well as the school run parents, it's the students leaving their cars on the road all day while they are at college.”
A local who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of backlash said: “I just want to move away, I wake up in the night dreading the mornings because I need to drive to work.
“It means I literally have to battle with mums, dads and students all using our driveways.
“They say ‘We’ll only be a minute’ but that minute means I’m late for work.”
Councillor Elaine Willmore is trying to resolve the situation, which she admits is “intolerable”.
She said: “When it’s bad it’s intolerable. Residents say it makes them want to leave and move away.
“When you have parents dropping off at the high school, it becomes chaotic.
“I know of three people who have had residents parking on drives before.
“It tends to be the parents parking on the driveway. They’ve gone out to tell them and they say ‘I’m just waiting for my kids’ or ‘I’ll only be five minutes’.
“There’s been lots of near misses, too. I think this could definitely get worse.”
A spokesperson for Worcestershire County Council said they were implementing parking restrictions on the road.
They said: “We would need to consider the wider effects of adding more restrictions.
“As with all traffic management measures, parking restrictions involve a balance of benefits and drawbacks, and it is important to approach any change with this in mind.”
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