Elmshott Lane car park faces three-year closure during A4 Bath Road cycle route works

A popular Cippenham car park is set to close for up to three years as Slough Borough Council starts work on a major cycle route alongside the A4 Bath Road.

Signs have been erected at the Elmshott Lane car park, near to the junction with Bath Road, which state the parking area will shut on September 23.

The facility currently offers free parking for up to two hours and is used by residents visiting the nearby parade of shops, including the Touchwood Pharmacy.

Slough Borough Council has confirmed the car park is closing so it can be used as an equipment storage area for contractors working on a new two-way cycle route between Huntercombe Lane and Uxbridge Road.

But the decision to shut the parking area has been criticised with some residents claiming it will take away vital parking spaces for those accessing the nearby pharmacy and corner shops.

Councillor Frank O’Kelly (Lib Dems, Cippenham Village) said: “There’s nowhere else to park down there. There’s no parking outside the shops.

“While I have great sympathy for the convenience of workers who are going to be doing this and locking up their machines, it’s just totally unacceptable not to understand the effect you’re going to have on residents.”

The Liberal Democrat councillor added that a decision of this significance should have been taken after carrying out an equality impact assessment to understand how many cars are using the site and who is going to be impacted by the closure.

He added: “It’s quite clear that residents are going to be affected, it’s quite clear that disabled people are going to be affected.

“It’s going to be a material effect on people with protected characteristics.”

The major A4 Bath Road cycle project has been in the works for a number of years and is set to be funded with the help of a £1.7million grant from the Department for Transport.

Work on the scheme is set to get underway in October.

A council spokeswoman apologised for the short notice residents have been given about the Elmshott Lane car park closure.

A statement said: “We have not been good enough in telling residents in advance. It all happened so fast (start of the A4 cycle route) that we have not been good enough in talking to residents about what’s going to be happening and why and having things in place before the signs went up.

“It went from a long-term project we were looking at to something happening extremely quickly. We haven’t been good enough in talking to local people about that.”

The spokeswoman added: “It (Elmshott Lane car park) may seem a small thing but ultimately it’s important to local people and we should have been better in talking to people about it beforehand.”