Pensioner pays £600 for new driveway in row over school parking

Local residents are frustrated by parents blocking roads and ignoring restrictions

A car illegally parked on double yellow lines (Getty/iStock)

After-school parking chaos has become such a problem in one area of Salford in Greater Manchester that a pensioner has been forced to build a new driveway to ensure he can get in and out in his car.

Local resident Alan Richardson says he had to build a driveway in front of his house because of cars clogging up the road.

Speaking to the Manchester Evening News, the 82-year-old said: “There are times when I just can’t get off my drive, there are that many cars around.”

Tired of being frustrated by parents on the school run, Mr Richardson says he was forced to take a drastic and costly measure of his own to address the problem.

“It’s prompted me to have a drive made at the front of my house, costing £600,” he told the newspaper.

He added that several of his neighbours had likewise been forced to convert their gardens into additional parking spaces for the same reason.

Mr Richardson lives close to Cadishead Primary School in Salford.

It was recently visited by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), which reported seeing parents parking on double yellow lines and blocking residential driveways at the junction of Allotment Road, Moss Side Road and Prospect Road as they arrived to pick up their children at the end of the school day at 3pm.

Another local resident, Sue Sinnott, 69, told the newspaper: “It’s ridiculous. There are people coming here and parking from 2.15pm onwards just so they can get a convenient space near the school. Some of them live within easy walking distance of here. It’s madness.

“You can see the line of cars stretching all the way down Moss Side road, some of them parking across people’s driveways.”

Salford City Council is set to paint further double yellow lines around the area and deploy four mobile cameras to help enforce existing restrictions.

Councillor Mike McCusker, its lead member for planning and sustainable development, told the LDRS that enforcement was currently proving to be an “issue” but added: “Without double yellow lines and zig-zags outside schools, we can’t enforce anything.

“We are introducing the cameras on a trial basis and we are currently patrolling two schools where there is a problem. But it takes a while for it to have an impact.

“The hope is that by imposing parking fines on motorists who break the restrictions it will change their behaviour and that word spreads around to other parents.”