Bollards to be installed to fight against verge parking
FUNDING has been secured to install wooden bollards in an attempt to prevent parking on grass verges.
Following a site visit with councillors and council officers in Littleborough, £7,500 from Pennine Township has been agreed to fund the bollards.
They will be placed on Calder, Moorfield, Mount, Brooklyn and Springfield Avenues in Littleborough and it is hoped the bollards will stop the grass verges being churned up by parking cars and vans.
Councillor Tom Besford, who was at the site visit last week, said some residents had resorted to placing stones and rocks on the verges to stop cars driving onto them - as it is visitors and delivery vehicles that are causing the most problems.
He said: “The area has small grass verges and quite narrow roads and for the last couple of years I’ve been dealing with many resident complaints about cars parking on those grass verges, churning it all up.
“What some residents have taken to doing is taking massive boulders and rocks and putting them on the grass to prevent it - it was a real eyesore and that area looked really bad.
“Nobody wants to have massive churned up mud and rubble all over the front of your driveway, and these bollards, I hope, will go some way to showing residents their community is being cared for.”
The Labour councillor for Littleborough Lakeside said the small wooden bollards would hopefully steer delivery drivers away from using the verges and added that there was plenty of parking elsewhere.
“It’s usually things like delivery drivers pulling up in vans on the grass verges and things like that,” he said.
“By putting bollards every two to three metres it will stop that from happening and it won’t restrict anyone’s access to their drives.
“All residents park on the road anyway because they don’t want to see their area churned up.
“There’s plenty of parking around there. If a delivery driver has to walk for another 15 to 20 seconds to get to a house - I’d rather that than them churning up the grass verges.”
Fellow Labour councillor for the ward John Hartley, who joined the council in 2012, said he has been receiving complaints about the verges since 2013.
He added that once the bollards have been put in place the grass will be relaid, but said he is unsure of how effective the bollards may be.
“I say let’s get them down and let’s try it,” he said.
“We don’t know if they’re going to work until we’ve seen them but something’s got to be done and as councillors we need to be seen to be taking some kind of action.
“It’d be a shame to leave it like that, looking like such a mess.”