THE Vale Council has been accused of “taking a bazooka to kill a fly” in a bid to restrict parking on a residential road.

Casualty actor and local resident Charles Dale has warned that proposed double yellow lines placed on the road linking Grove Place and Woodland Place would severally affect local residents and would exacerbate the current limited parking problems.

A notice has gone up on the road warning that within eight metres of both sides from the centre of the unnamed lane, which runs parallel to Grove Place and Woodland Place, there will be a prohibition of waiting at any time order.

The same order, which would mean the placement of double yellow lines, is also planned for the junctions of Coleridge Avenue and Dyserth Road with Cornerswell Road.

Grove Place resident Charles Dale, 51, said that he would prefer parking permits for the area as it was already difficult enough to find a parking space.

"All the residents use this road to park because it gets filled up during the day," he said.

"You very rarely get to park outside your own house as that is a luxury, but all I'm worried about is if they take this away it will make things even worse as residential parking is already paramount."

He added: "You could lose eight to ten parking spaces. You would be better off just taking them from one side.

"If you lost more spaces it would make it more difficult for the residents living here."

Mr Dale, who also starred in Coronation Street, added that he had an electric car in a garage in the lane and another car to drive up to North Wales, and that these restrictions would affect other households with more than one car per family.

He added that he believed parking permits would be the “ideal solution” for local residents and that taking away eight metres either side of the lane “is like taking a bazooka to kill a fly”

Michael Clogg, operational manager for highways and engineering at the Vale Council, said that the road was “heavily parked along both sides with no passing places along its entire length” and that vehicles meeting each other “are forced to reverse around blind corners in order to allow the other to pass”.

“The order is being introduced to create a safe passing place for vehicles at the midpoint of the road to avoid the need for vehicles to reverse and thereby improving highway safety in the area,” he said.

He added that the council was “mindful” of the difficulty in finding a parking space in the area and was introducing the parking restrictions where “cars should not be parking anyway”.

“The number of parking spaces lost has also been kept to an absolute minimum,” he said.

“It is regrettable that a certain number of parking spaces will be lost, however, the benefits to highway safety are considered to outweigh the small loss of parking opportunity.”

He added that parking permits would not help “due to multiple car ownership and the predominately-terraced housing in the area providing a very short length of kerbside space outside each property”

“In any case, the Council does not currently support the introduction of new ‘resident only’ bays.”

He added that no objections were received after they were advertised in October last year.