Parking problems outside Sainsbury's

Before Christmas residents reported a lorry parked on Badminton Road outside Sainsbury's unloading, instead of in the designated lorry bay. This made it difficult to exit the car park safely because of reduced visibility.

Claire Young raised this with both the council and the local beat manager. PC Simmons talked to the store manager, who in turn made the drivers aware of the problem. He trusts there will be no further problems from his side, however he has expressed a concern that drivers who may be customers rather than suppliers may park in the same location.

Council officers confirmed that they secured a commitment from the Sainsbury’s developer to fund a permanent TRO if parking issues developed on Badminton Road as a result of the development. However, the original expectation was that the problem would be with customers parking on Badminton Road either for convenience or because the car park was full, which could be addressed by the introduction of double yellow lines. The incident reported involved a vehicle unloading, which yellow lines would not legally prevent. That could only be done by introducing a loading/unloading ban during the store opening hours. The council could promote such a ban but it could impact on local residents.

The first step is to see whether this is a regular occurrence or a rarity. To help with that, if you see an incident, please report it to Claire so she can put together an incident log for the council. It would be helpful if you could also say if the lorry was unloading/loading or just parked, but the most important thing is to know when lorries are parking on Badminton Road near the store.