Rat-run drivers rattle residents

NEIGHBOURS vent their anger after years of complaining about the HGV rat-run. TOP: Protesters Kathleen Taylor and Paul Radakin

Protesters call for lorry ban after years of disruption

FED-UP neighbours are demanding that HGVs and lorries are banned from a residential rat run after years of complaints.

They brandished placards and staged a protest in a bid to stop the horrendous noise and vibrations from large vehicles using Stockfield Road and Hunt Lane, Chadderton.

There are several schools in the area and they fear that someone could be killed.

The potholed roads are used as a short cut to near-by industrial units, avoiding the traffic lights at the junction of Broadway and Middleton Road.

Residents are woken up throughout the night and cannot open their windows during the summer.

Elderly people living in retirement housing in Kempsey Court, whose gardens back on to Stockfield Road, are also affected.

Kathleen Taylor (86), of Kempsey Court, recently had a major operation and said: “Trying to recuperate was impossible. I have the radio on all night to drown out the noise. It is terrible.

“I went to a meeting 10 years ago about the problem. They did nothing, in fact it’s got worse. I love the neighbours, that’s the only thing that keeps me here.”

Neighbour Joan Gardener (81) described how the vibrations caused by the traffic rattled her house at night.

She said: “I can understand when Middleton Road is very busy that they want to dodge down here. But the roads aren’t busy at 3am in the morning.

“It is absolutely dreadful. It is just like living in the middle of an industrial site. I cannot open my French doors or sit out in the garden.”

Two of her neighbours recently died from cancer, and she added: “They couldn’t even get peace. It is bad when you can’t sleep through morphine.”

Sandra Vickers (46), of Stockfield Road, said: “You are taking your life in your hands when you cross the road.

“It is constant all the time. The whole house moves, everything just rattles. I can’t cope.”

One resident, who does not want to be named, has commissioned a survey of neighbours’ views, saying that the council had failed to act on years of complaints.

He wants the Hunt Lane/Broadway and Stockfield Road/Melbourne Street junctions narrowed so large vehicles cannot get through.

“The council thinks that after a while we will get sick of complaining and just leave it,” he said.

Tony Noblet, service director highways and operations, said Greater Manchester Waste Authority drivers had been told not to use the roads to reach Arkwright Street tip. He has also written to haulage companies asking them to use Middleton Road. He explained that the council could not narrow the Hunt Lane junction because Broadway, a trunk road, is owned by the Highways Agency.

The council is in protracted negotiations to take over responsibility of Broadway, and he added: “We would then look very sympathetically at dealing with the through traffic.”