Residents Alarmed Over Car Parking

Fire Engines could not get through

Brentford Petition Raised

This picture, taken on Good Friday when Brentford were at home to Sheffield Wednesday, is typical of the scene in side roads when a Second Division game is staged at Griffin Park. A fire engine could not get through these roads.

Families living in streets round Brentford football ground have learned to fear the days when the first team is playing at home. Then the area is turned into a potential fire-trap as hundreds of cars park bumper to bumper along the narrow roads, sometimes three abreast.

Residents say that if fire broke out in any of hte houses lining the roads, firemen would be unable to move the cars and get an appliance to the burning building.

Fifty-years-old Mr John Bates, of 24, Netley Road, Brentford, one of the roads used as a parking area by Brentford fans, is organising a petition among the residents which he will present to the Town Hall, asking for a two-foot space to be kept between the bumpers of all parked cars.

“We don’t want them to move altogether,” Mr Bates told the “Brentford and Chiswick Times”. “But we do feel that drivers should obey police regulations and keep a two-feet wide space between their bumpers.

“At the recent Brentford and Luton cup-tie on a Wednesday, cars were parked three abreast all up Netley Road. One driver even took his car up on to the pavement and parked it outside a shop. What chance would we have if a fire broke out down the street?”

Mr Bates is also worried because his wife cannot walk between the cars to cross over the road. “If she want to get to a neighbour’s house a matter of ten feet away, she has to walk 300 yards up and down the road to get round the cars” he said.

Ambulance Could Not Get to House

Recently an ambulance was called to a house in Netley Road, and the ambulance attendants spent a considerable time getting the patient over the cars. He was taken to hospital with appendicitis. “That was serious enough, but what if it had been an even more urgent case?” asked Mr Bates.

He thinks that a lot of the trouble lies in the fact that the cars are “looked after” by old men while they are parked in the roads. They try to pack in as many cars as possible in order to get tips, and if a motor coach tries to park they do their best to move it on because it takes up too much space.

Mr Bates is himself a Brentford fan and followed the club to Luton for the cup-tie. There he found traffic conditions very…