ROAD safety bosses have admitted their hands are tied when it comes to introducing extra measures to tackle cruisers at Kingsditch Retail Park.

Swindon Village Parish Council has revealed there have been three serious road accidents in the area in five weeks.

Community leaders had hoped the area would be designated as an official "accident hotspot" in a bid to allocate more resources to the problem. But Gloucestershire County Council says it does not warrant special designation because it fails to meet its criteria, which includes the time period over which accidents take place.

Historically, in Kingsditch, accidents have mainly taken place on Sunday nights.

The parish council newsletter states: "It is felt that three serious incidents in five weeks was more than enough evidence of a problem and it was hoped that the responsible authorities were not waiting for a death before feeling prompted to take action."

The first incident was on July 31 and involved a Vauxhall Corsa. Police then attended a collision on August 21 when a dark coloured vehicle collided with a Honda, believed to have been occupied by an elderly couple.

It happened at the double mini-roundabout at the junction of Wymans Lane, Kingsditch Lane, Runnings Road and Swindon Road. The driver failed to stop and drove off before police arrived on the scene.

And on September 4, a Citroen Saxo left the road and crashed into the boundary wall of Skellerns Motorcycles in Runnings Road. Both the vehicle and the wall were damaged, although the occupants of the vehicle were unhurt.

The Cheltenham Cruiser Working Group, which consists of police, Cheltenham Borough Council, Highways, residents and parish councillors, is continuing to try and tackle the problem.

Despite some success where cruisers have been pushed out of the town centre, police confirmed the problem has re-emerged in the Kingsditch area. In one day, on September 18, officers issued six endorsable penalty notices and two non-endorsable penalty notices.

They also gave two warnings for driving in an antisocial manner and seized two vehicles for having no insurance.

Inspector Paul Cruise said: "We are running a weekly police operation which aims to target the drivers that are using their cars in an antisocial way. "Using vehicles in this way not only causes distress to local residents but also poses a danger to other road users.

"The presence of police officers at the gatherings has had a noticeable impact on the standards of driving, which in turn has been reflected in the decreased number of complaints called in by local residents."

The county council said the frequency of two or three injury collisions a year was a concern. Andrew Parker-Mowbray, from the Gloucestershire Road Safety Partnership said the road safety team assesses all the roads in the county according to a detailed criteria.

He added: "Our collision history suggests that the Malmesbury Road area of the Kingsditch Industrial Estate has slightly more traffic incidents than similar industrial areas elsewhere in the county. The data indicates that these collisions are largely attributed to cruiser activities. We are therefore happy for the police to take an enforcement lead on this matter."

OPINION, P8