DROITWICH residents have voiced a number of serious concerns over the future of infrastructure and traffic management in Droitwich in the face of what one called a ‘tsunami of development’ about to hit.

The residents were speaking at the town’s annual meeting on Monday evening.

David Davidson from the Ombersley Street West area, was concerned about parking around the station. He said: “When we get another 750 houses the situation is going to get even worse. We can’t park anywhere near our houses. The whole situation is intolerable. It should be possible to introduce some sort of scheme to deter people from parking there all day.”

Brian Field from Herriots Court, added: “Surely what we really need is public transport at that time of the morning and that time of the evening, and that’s something we don’t seem to get. We have these big estates on the outside of town, and then expect people to what, fly into town?”

Kevin Jackson from Oakley Road, thought the problems were more widespread. He said: “When you talk about the increase in all the developments, what worries me about my town is the lack of facilities. We’re going to absorb potentially thousands more people, and I can’t see how we’re going to cope with it.

“When we look at the town centre I’m shocked to see what there actually is in the town. How are we going to bring the income to attract people to come to this town? We need new facilities. People are going to Bromsgrove, Kidderminster and Worcester for shopping because there are no facilities in this town.”

Resident John Grass was concerned by developers not sticking to conditions placed on some planning applications and the effect on the town's infrastructure.

He said: “With the tsunami of development that’s about to descend on Droitwich over the next few years we need to be planning to improve our infrastructure to deal with it all.

“The Copcut developers are trying to weasel out of some of the conditions that were attached to that planning application, but they were put there for a reason they weren’t put there to be disregarded. Let’s plan improvements to the infrastructure for the future and let’s make sure we hold developers to account for the conditions placed on applications.”

Councillor Richard Morris agreed with his concerns, adding: “The conditions were there in the first place because we’ve got the Yew Tree development we’ve got the Copcut development, and that will bring horror to the roads of Droitwich.”

Similar issues were raised over developers on the Hanbury Road failing to live up to their responsibilities before moving in residents, and a notice to evict residents from garages on Bower Hill in order to build more housing, which would impact on residents' parking.

The town council offered to address a number of the issues raised, as well as inviting in representatives from the county highways department to a future meeting to answer questions over infrastructure.