A mini rugby tournament held at the London Irish Hazelwood centre on 29th September gave rise to a number of complaints from local residents due to the inconsiderate parking of vehicles in nearby streets. It must first be said that this Association was not given advance warning and were therefore unable to alert local neighbours prior to the event.
It seems that Dorking Rugby Club relocated their tournament to Hazelwood at the last minute due to their own water-logged pitches. (London Irish Amateur RFU, in contrast, have spent vast sums on improving their drainage}.
L.Irish realised that parking would be an issue and emailed a map to Dorking showing local car parks and insisted that they provide extra parking attendants. The Club complied but with only sufficient for Hazelwood Drive and not the nearby roads.
A number of complaints were made to London Irish on the day with one neighbour insisting that an official from the Club come and see the resultant parking chaos. On seeing the problem the official could not disagree.
The official spoke with the amateur club after the event and suggested the following for future events:
- 100-150 extra cones
- Create a small flyer that effectively tells our residents: ‘We have an event tomorrow and there is likely to be congestion. To resolve this we are putting cones along your road to prevent people parking and inconveniencing you, obviously feel free to move the cone as needed for your movement. We will remove all cones once the event is over.’
- Put the cones out the day before and put flyers in the letterbox at the same time.
- Roads we would need to cone off are:
- Hazelwood Drive - we already have cones
- Croysdale Avenue - either side of Hazelwood drive
- Hawkewood Road - prior to the houses starting
- Vereker Drive - first part
A further suggestion was to approach St Pauls school to see if the Club could hire their car park on busy event days – the official will chase this up.
London Irish apologises for the inconvenience caused to residents.
