AN INCENSED army of Great Baddow residents are threatening to barricade a busy school bus-route to prove a point to planners.
Mark Thompson and his neighbours will park their cars along Noakes Avenue to demonstrate the difficulty and dangers drivers will face once a set of garages are demolished.
Plans to knock down shared garages to make way for five Chelmer Housing Partnership homes were given the green light by Chelmsford City Council on Tuesday, April 30.
A survey confirmed there was adequate on-street parking, yet the 43-year-old resident marched out of the planning committee meeting branding the verdict "ridiculous".
"It's a major bus route and they pass every half an hour.
"If the garages go then we have to park on the main road which will block the traffic and buses.
"It will cause major problems and even a safety hazard for kids going to school," he said.
"We're all going to park on the road to block it up to see what it's like and to prove a point that you can't get a bus down.
"We're going to get together and discuss it.
"We even wondered how much it would cost to buy the areas the garages are on to stop them putting housing on it.
"But I don't think they will let us do that because it's money in their pocket," he said.
Arthritis sufferer Sheila Marvin, 66, is concerned that a busier road could lead to more accidents. The most recent one being in 2004 when Tomas Wren, 13, died after being hit by a motorcycle after exiting Great Baddow High School.
Mrs Marvin also says she is struggling to sleep at the thought of losing the garage, which she has owned for 25 years, beside her three-bedroom terraced home.
She said: "The completed parking survey is complete tripe.
"I just don't know where I go from here.
"Do I dig my heels in and say I don't want to go?
"I have had one knee replacement which makes it so difficult to get over the road to the other garage – which is also less secure – and in a few years I may not be able to move so well."
The retired hairdresser has the option of a spare garage space over the road, yet most residents, who originally parked in the ten-car capacity garages, will have to park on the street.
This same proposal was originally withdrawn in the autumn, yet approved after a parking survey noted there were about 55 off-street spaces and 106 on-street spaces within a 280-metre distance of the area.
At the meeting, the committee voted unanimously for the proposal, while vice-chairman Richard Poulter said: "If you look around the city as a whole this is little different to what exists elsewhere.
"I would advise that people with problems should go to the Citizens Advice Bureau."
