Pengelly & Mizen is located along Park Road in Peterborough city centre.

Residents and business owners in Peterborough alike have called to stop drivers breaking the rules of the road in the city centre and putting lives at risk.

Pengelly & Mizen Vets, on Park Road, has been blighted for the past two and a half years by cars using the front of their premises to pull off manoeuvres to allow them to turn right onto Broadway when the layout of the road does not allow this.

According to staff at the practice and residents, the area has been blighted by drivers heading towards the surgery down Park Road- from the direction on Westgate- but instead to taking the left turn, which is the only legal option, onto Church Walk, ignoring the left turn only road and turning right towards Broadway.

Ann Howard and staff from the Pengelly and Mizen veterinary surgery at Park Road - outside the surgery where safety bollards have been removed in an RTC.

placeholder image — Ann Howard and staff from the Pengelly and Mizen veterinary surgery at Park Road - outside the surgery where safety bollards have been removed in an RTC.

This often means the cars have to mount the pavement outside of the surgery and use it’s front car park to make the manoeuvre to be able to make the turn.

Taking the left down Church Walk still allows drivers to access Broadway in just a couple of minutes via St Mark’s Street and Burghley Road/Burghley Square.

Residents have been pushing for action on the road but have said that the creation of an island as well as the addition of three bollards have made it more awkward for cars to flout the rules but has not deterred many.

Within the last month, one of the bollards has been destroyed and it yet to be replaced.

The section of road outside of the vets.

Practice Manager Sarah McDiarmid-Branch said: “We have this problem 24 hours a day, it’s just streams of traffic one after another.

“Drivers, often at very high speed come down here driving on the wrong side of the road and use this pavement and reverse onto our frontage at all hours. We’ve had our vets standing out here in hi-vis and these drivers just do not care.

"There have been so many near misses. Just three weeks ago, at 4am, we had a car come flying down here at very high speed and take a bollard out and drag it a considerable way down the street.”

The vets has been working in conjunction with local resident and regular practice user Ann Howard, who herself had first-hand experience of just how dangerous the stretch of path can be.

She added: “I have been caught many times going to the vets. You have to throw yourself into the side of the cars or you will get hit.

“We have been fighting like mad for the last two and a half years to stop someone getting killed.

“On one visit, I was being driven down there and we were met by an oncoming car. If there hadn’t have been a space on the vet forecourt then I don’t know what would have happened. We had three vehicles behind us and a car coming straight down the pavement at us.

"This is so serious, we are talking about life and death and we don’t want any more empty promises. We need to do what we can to stop this.”