MORE than 18 months ago Sefton’s lumbering Labour councillors asked for yet another report on a blindingly obvious problem which had been steadily building for a decade.
They called for a summer survey between April and June to address the by then already predictable traffic flow and parking chaos which ensues when our coast is besieged by tens of thousands of visitors every time the sun shines and temperatures rise above 21C. There’s just one unsurmountable snag: places like Crosby and Formby, which bear the brunt of these ‘invasions’, are not purpose-designed seaside resorts, but highly-desirable residential areas. Labour’s procrastination meant that nothing could be done last summer. Twelve months on, exacerbated by the release from Covid lockdown, and the virtual abandonment of foreign costa holiday tourism packages, the visitor problem here has reached total gridlock with the inherent consequences of health hazards, anti-social behaviour, a tsunami of litter and a much-heightened fire risk from illegal overnight campers.
And despite Labour giving four council cabinet members and one council officer the job of finding a solution, we have it on record that, once again, there will be no real progress this year.
The entire situation has become bogged down in bureaucracy: a rag-bag of worthless platitudes and meetings about meetings, at the centre of which is confusion over police powers and, in Formby, the National Trust’s inability to cope with a vast area they promote to outsiders.
Only Conservative councillors are providing any prospect of momentum. Denise Dutton (Harington ward) has already been the prime mover in securing traffic matrix information signs on approaches to the coast, not least aimed at family cohorts from as far away as Birmingham and Yorkshire, while Joe Riley, at Formby Parish Council(also Harington ward), has presented two petitions on behalf of residents, whose blocked driveways have literally made them prisoners in their own homes.
Among petitioners’ demands are the provision of more yellow lines, an increase in parking fines from £30 (which many are more than willing to pay) to £150, and powers to block off roads and clamp or tow away obstructing vehicles.
But by far the greatest consensus is for residents-only parking provision.
We shall see. Indeed, we shall have to see. For Labour, Liberal, and so-called Independent politicians who shirk responsibility will pay at the ballot box.
Fortunately, Conservative Party representatives at all levels are determined to break the impasse and produce a result which puts residents’ interests first and does not foster a legion of often undesirable incomers, the vast majority of whom make no contribution to the local economy.
