A DEESIDE resident is outraged with the lack of an appropriate parking area for his local park.

Ray Houlbrook, who has lived near Wepre Park for about 42 years, said the park needs to expand its parking facility to stop people parking on the main road, which is causing disruption to other road users and pedestrians.

He added: “The parking has become an issue, particularly in the nice weather, you can’t get in to the park because there’s that many people with cars and nowhere to put them.

“There is a green area in which you can park which deals with the overflow, but due to the bad weather it has been shut because they don’t want to ruin the grass, which I understand but parking on the road is just dangerous.”

The 73-year-old said since improvements have been made to the park, more people are being encouraged to visit, but nothing has been done to improve the parking space area.

Ray expressed his concern about people parking on the street, saying it is dangerous for everyone, particularly because it is on a bend.

He said: “Due to people parking on the road, it has reduced the main road to one way, the emergency services would have a real problem trying to get through.

“It’s a victim of its own success, the infrastructure has got to be altered and this is not impossible.

“If you want to encourage people to go to the park, you need to encourage them to park there, I know in the past it’s been that busy that I’ve turned around and come back home because I have a 4x4 and it’s hard enough as it is.”

Tom Woodall, Access and Natural Environment Manager, said there are occasional parking pressures at Wepre Park and people have to find alternative areas to park their vehicles.

He added: “This has been compounded by recent wet weather which has prevented the use of the overflow parking areas on the fields. However, we are investigating potential options that would enable the parking overflow areas to be made available for use throughout the year when necessary.

“Wepre Park is a wonderful place to visit and is understandably very popular but when we do experience pressures on the car park area I would urge visitors who have to park their vehicles on the highway to do so as considerately as possible.”