Residents call for 'common sense' over car park to end congestion

Traffic around Whitegate CE Primary School has been on the rise since 2010, when pupil numbers started to creep from 110 to its current 163, with most travelling around six miles by car from Winsford.

Residents say some parents park across driveways in long lines along Grange Lane, opposite the school entrance, which forces passing drivers to mount kerb, sometimes at speed.

Pedestrians on Cinder Hill at the north end of the village also have to walk in the carriageway to pass, where cars come down the hill at 40mph.

While some residents are worried about the school’s expansion and would like it to stop, they’re also aware there’s a ready-made solution to the problem which isn’t being exploited.

The Diocese of Chester controls a piece of land adjacent to the school which already has planning permission 35-vehicle car park. 

Passing traffic mounting the pavement on Grange Lane, Whitegate (Image: Newsquest)

However, building a safe entrance to the car park where the planning permission dictates on Cinder Hill would mean taking another chunk of land from the vicarage garden.

While the diocese has said it would be open to leasing the land to Whitegate and Marton Parish Council, who would operate the car park, it wants to reserve the right to take it back should it sell the vicarage in future.

The proposed entrance to the car park, which would need to take a piece of land from the vicarage garden to the left to meet its planning conditions (Image: Newsquest)

While the parish council declined a request for comment, correspondence shows it's concerned its potential investment building the car park - estimated at £150,000 - would be lost if the diocese takes back the land in future.

The diocese also declined an invitation to comment, but said it considered this ‘an historic issue’, and believes it made ‘reasonable offers’ for use of the vicarage land in the past.

Whitegate Primary parents waiting at the entrance to Vale Royal Drive (Image: Newsquest)

Chris Henretty, who has lived in Whitegate for 42 years, says the stalemate between the parish council and the diocese is ‘frustrating to say the least’, and the traffic in the village at 3pm on weekdays is ‘virtually intolerable’.

He said: “It’s worse in the afternoons when people park up along Grange Lane and Cinder Hill with their engines running.

Parked cars can make it difficult for through traffic to pass (Image: Newsquest)

“The school has been allowed to expand with no consideration for the effect this is having on the village.

“There’s land available which was specifically left to the diocese for use as a car park for both the church and the school, but there seems to be a lack of common sense at play.

Waiting parents queueing up on Cinder Hill at home time (Image: Newsquest)

“The diocese is worried about the loss of a small strip of land for the entrance impacting the value of the vicarage, while the parish council is concerned - quite reasonably - about losing its investment. 

“I’ve been trying to help move the issue forward for years now, but it feels like banging your head against a brick wall.”

Another Whitegate resident, Kevin Garvey, said: “There’s always going to be some traffic disturbance when a village this size has a primary school, which we’re prepared to accept.

“But with things as they are, we think it's dangerous and we're worried someone is going to get hurt, and it will most likely be child.

"There’s bound to be an accident one day.

“The school gets its funding per pupil, so it’s in its interest to grow.

“It used to be the village school. Now it’s just a school in the village.

“The most frustrating this is, we’ve got a ready-made solution here, but parties involved have hit an impasse. They need to reach a reasonable compromise.”

Whitegate Primary School were approached for comment but declined to respond.