As reported last month, Heather Wienholt had written to Alderley Edge Parish Council and Rob Cramer, Area Traffic Engineer at Cheshire East Council, on behalf of village traders to request a full review of the parking restrictions in Alderley Edge village.
Heather outlined a number of problems which had been identified by village traders as needing attention but the "biggest bug bear of all" for local traders is the Tesco loading bay, which provides Tesco with 4 parking spaces, for their own use, for 7 hours a day of trading time.
Heather said "Being located next to this bay enables me to see the huge volume of tickets being issued in this bay, mostly in the 3-7 pm slot. As the loading bay is poorly signed this leads to confusion for the motorist, people are unintentionally parking there and therefore receiving fines.
"I reckon at least 10 tickets are issued here each day. This is damaging for our trade immensely."
Rob Cramer has since approached Tesco about their delivery schedule and Heather informed us this morning that "Tesco have confirmed that they do not need the afternoon slot for their loading bay. I have been promised that the parking restrictions will be changed in the loading bay asap.... So one step in the right direction for Alderley Edge. "
Councillor Mary Maczkowiak confirmed that over 600 tickets have been issued in this particular spot (very interesting given my Freedom of Information Request claimed there had only been 4**) and said "Unfortunately the procedure to change this is quite long winded but we requested that he action this asap.
"Mr Cramer is retiring in the next few weeks but we requested this to be done as a matter of urgency as Tesco are also being affected by this restriction."
Regarding the other issues raised by Heather Wienholt and the village traders, Mary Maczkowiak said "We had a meeting with Rob Cramer on Wednesday night last week to discuss traffic management for the village post bypass and we hope to have a meeting with traders, our PCSO and Parish Councillors after the bypass is open to discuss all options on parking in the village including time restrictions on each road."
**I submitted a FOI request on 29th April asking how many tickets had been issued to those illegally parking in the loading bay outside the Tesco Express store since the store opened on February 5th. The response I received from Cheshire East stated only 4 tickets had been issued in this loading bay between 5th February and 29th April this year generating £140.00.
I did question the accuracy of this response given we had had 4 people tell alderleyedge.com they had received a ticket during this period and I had seen far more than 4 tickets issued there but they insisted the figures were correct so it is very interesting to now be given a figure of over 600, though of course this will be for a different period.
