Following concern from residents who contacted Pam, myself and Cllr Burns in Heald Green, councillors had an emergency discussion on Tuesday about the parking problems on St Ann’s Road North (see Google map).

As I wrote a few days ago, this is a problem that’s only emerged in the last six or seven weeks. For a decade prior to that, the traffic for Cheadle Business Park has stayed on the park and on Kingsway – and it was always clearly understood that St Ann’s Road North should not get any of that traffic.

So we’re all agreed this should not be happening. The problem we have is how to deal with it.

There’s no quick and easy solution. The vehicles, which we strongly believe are from people on Cheadle Royal but don’t have proof, are legally parked along the road. We could start putting down lines and signs, but that would inconvenience residents and may well simply move the cars along a bit, or push them onto side roads like Oakdale Drive.

The approach all nine councillors agreed on Tuesday is:

• request a report from Council officers, to come to the next area committee meeting in three weeks time, into what can be done from the Council side.  For example, there may have been conditions in the original planning permissions about parking.
• as councillors, we will be putting pressure on the managers of the business park and, if needed, the individual tenants, to sort this out.  There is room on the business park for additional parking.  There are roads throughout Cheadle Royal that cars could park along.  There could be a park-and-ride service for people working on the business park.

As a mentioned, I don’t think there’s a quick or easy solution, but we are determined to tackle this urgently and not allow the situation to become the norm.

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