The chaos at the Arnison Centre today has been caused by queuing for McDonalds. Whilst this is not directly McDonald’s fault they should have recognised that queues were causing a problem and acted to close the drive thru.

The site owners and the Council are entirely to blame for this issue. They were told not to allow McDonalds expansion. They were told not to expand the site without an additional exit. And for twelve months we have been telling them to fix the issue. Instead they’ve been arguing over whether an extra exit lane needs planning permission.

Sovereign Centros which owns the site, Workman which manage it and Durham County Council need to bang their heads together and come up with a solution now.

For elderly residents to be stranded in their cars for 45 minutes and buses delayed by just as long is unacceptable.

If emergency vehicles needed access to the site or the surrounding roads they wouldn’t be able to.

We have written to the police and council today

And also to the site owners and management company demanding urgent action before someone needing medical attention finds an ambulance can’t get to them.