Watch video of M&S Stanepark on the first day of M&S opening

For over 6 months now the campaign to save Colchester High Street has been raising awareness and giving several warnings. Lets watch this video of Stanepark on the first day of M&S.

The first warning  we gave was that the new M&S  store in Stanepark will cause traffic chaos around Stanway which is already far too congested.

We also predicted that the carpark of around 670 spaces was wholly insufficient when you think that B&Q previously had around 410 spaces all to themselves.

Often when I visited the old B&Q store, the car park would be at least half, if not three quarters full. Now B&Q have to share 670 spaces with M&S, Superdrug, Aldi, Mountain Warehouse, Greggs, Cook and another store as yet unnamed.

“That’s an average of 83.75 car parking spaces per store.”

Click on the video to play the footage

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Lets do some simple sums

Lets make a conservative estimate, at roughly how many staff work at each store and how many car parking spaces might need to be reserved for staff parking…

  • M&S staff 160
  • B&Q staff 120
  • Aldi 50 staff
  • Superdrug staff 20
  • Mountain Warehouse 20
  • Greggs 5 staff
  • Cook 5 staff
  • Unknown store 20 staff?

400 staff in total including managers and regional visiting managers etc maybe?

Lets say that 30% of staff are on shift  at anyone time that drive cars, that could be 120 cars taken up by staff parking.

This reduces the available parking spaces from 670 down to 550 spaces for all those stores.

How did Government inspectors ever come to the conclusion that this retail park was a good idea.

You have to feel sorry for local residents in Stanway who have to put up with all this congestions every day…..