Parking 'makes life impossible'

Hospice founder Sister Frances Dominica described the parking situation around the children's hospice as "crazy and chaotic".

She said: "Young people who come to Helen House and to Douglas House are mostly in wheelchairs, and if they want to go out it's actually virtually impossible for them to go very far without having to get off the pavement.

"Cars are parked so close to the wall there isn't room for them to get through, and that creates quite a dangerous situation."

Now she has joined residents of the streets around the hospices in calling for a suggested controlled parking zone in Divinity Road to be extended to their area.

She added: "I've lived in Oxford since 1974 and I've never known it as bad as these last months. It's just chaotic."

Eka Morgan, of St Mary's Road Residents' Association, said: "The parking congestion problem in East Oxford has reached crisis point.

"The current problems are dangerous parking on corners, with prams and wheelchairs not being able to get past. In St Mary's Road for instance, a third of the cars are commuter cars."

Fran Reichenberg, of St Mary's Road, said she became all too aware of the problems facing people in wheelchairs after her son Michael, six, broke his leg in a skiing accident.

She said: "It was not possible to push him to school on the pavement because of the cars on the pavement. It proved a steep learning curve for me.

"Goodness knows how people from the hospice manage."

Pip Murray, the headteacher of SS Mary and John CoE Primary School, said parking posed real problems because the school was split between two sites.

She said: "We regularly need to take our children between the two sites. We find cars are parked dangerously across corners. We find that they are double parked up on the pavements, making the pavements too narrow."

The parking zone issue is expected to be discussed at County Hall on Tuesday.