PEOPLE living near a school building site have received an apology after complaining that construction workers employed by the county council, were breaking planning permission rules about traffic and deliveries.
Claire Marsh, who lives on Knights Road, Blackbird Leys, Oxford, with her family, said contractors' behaviour was ‘not acceptable’.
The construction work is taking place in Knights Road to build a new special needs school, The Orion Academy.
The school is being built as part of plans to demolish and replace the old Northfield School building.
Ms Marsh told the Oxford Mail, however, that workers for Morgan Sindall Construction, had not been following the rules set out in the planning permission.
She said: “The lorries are supposed to have a 30-minute handover, this is not happening.
We are meant to be having a 24 hour notice period for double lorries, my Mother currently has one outside her house and she had no prior notice of this drop off.
“The drop-off is starting at 6.30am when the planning permission says they have to come after rush hour, which is after 9.30am.
“They are also meant to be cleaning the mud off the street, but no one is doing that.
“The bungalows next to where we live are occupied by elderly people in their 80s and 90s, if they were to slip on the mud it could really damage them.”
In the planning permission it states that deliveries need to avoid peak hours, defined as 7.30am-9.30am and 4.30pm-6.30pm.
It also states that lorries cannot deliver during school drop off and pick up.
She added: “The school is very much needed and we do not have a problem with it. We could just do with a little bit of courtesy.”
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A spokesperson for Morgan Sindall Construction said: “On Monday, one of our subcontractors was carrying out work to lay concrete foundations, and stabilise access routes to the site. These tasks should have occurred on separate days, however, a scheduling error led to them both taking place on the same day resulting in increased site traffic. We apologise to local residents inconvenienced by this and have re-iterated to everyone involved in the project that the site access and loading agreements must be adhered to.”
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