Warning as car park chaos to continue in busy festive period

A warning has been issued to Christmas shoppers in Taunton as long delays at a busy car park are expected to continue through the festive period.

Motorists say they are getting stuck in queues "for hours" at the Sainsbury's superstore at Hankridge Farm off the A358 Toneway. Vehicles attempting to leave the business park, which also serves other shops including Halfords, Currys and Costa Coffee, are getting trapped in long jams exiting onto the A358.

Locals say it's so bad during busy periods that they are being fined for staying over the four-hour time limit for the car park as they sit in the queues. A council spokesman has warned shoppers that the chaotic scenes are expected to continue through the busy Christmas period.

Queues at Hankridge Farm in Taunton

The council spokesman said: "We are aware of reports of congestion and delays for traffic leaving the Hankridge retail park at certain times, particularly the weekend. We anticipate this will be a feature during the festive season."

It has been claimed that the issues at the car park have become significantly worse since a nearby road improvement scheme was completed. Somerset County Council spent £8.3m on improvements to the Creech Castle junction, where the A358 Toneway meets the A38 Bridgwater Road and the works were completed in September 2022.

The council spokesman told Somerset Live that the car park problems were an issue before the road improvements took place. However, they conceded that the new road layout may be making the delays worse.

The spokesman said: "This is a long-standing issue and pre-dates our Toneway improvement works. In any case, that work has increased capacity at the Toneway junction and improved traffic flows.

"The flow on the main A358 is very good with limited congestion. It is possible that developers potentially modelled for a certain number of trips to and from the Hankridge site but in recent years this has probably far exceeded this number and the main arterial route must take priority."

Another angry motorist sent photos of the queues at the car park to Somerset Live . They say they became stuck in the jams at around 2pm on Friday, October 27.

They said: "Fridays tend to be busy around Hankridge in general, and on the M5 which is nearby - and there may have been an incident there which contributed. But it feels like this seems to happen a lot, especially at the weekend, and seems worse since the work on Toneway has been completed.

"On this occasion I saw cars queueing from deep inside the supermarket car park, so I abandoned going into the shop and took a detour back through the filling station, and it took me 40 minutes to get out. It would have been hours had I gone all the way to park at the supermarket, so I decided to make an escape for it, but no doubt there are occasions where people have ended up overstaying and receiving fines."

Responding to the concerns, a Sainsbury's spokesman said: "We understand that traffic flow can be a challenge during busy times at our Hankridge Farm store. We have measures in place to try to ease this.

"This includes a four-hour parking limit and marshalling over Christmas. We would encourage any customers who receive a parking charge notice after being caught in traffic to refer to the appeal process on the ticket."

References

1. ^{^} The 'five-star' Somerset restaurant that everyone is raving about (www.somersetlive.co.uk)
2. ^{^} Warning as 'kindest, funniest' Somerset husband loses cancer battle (www.somersetlive.co.uk)