Protests halt roadworks to reduce congestion in Coventry

Jane Garner said she had struggled to sell her house because of the changes to the road

Work designed to reduce congestion in an area of Coventry has been halted because of protests.

The city council said work on the Spon End site had been disrupted by a "small group of protesters".

People living nearby have complained the road-widening scheme will bring traffic closer to their homes.

One of them, Jane Garner, said the council was "sacrificing" residents' quality of life in Spon End in return for an "instant fix".

Her family have lived on the street for more than 100 years.

"This is a conservation area and by removing the parking and putting in a fourth lane of traffic the council will be putting HGVs and double decker buses less than 10 foot from our front doors," she said.

Ms Garner has been trying to sell the property to pay for her father's care, but said sales had fallen through, because of concern about the roadworks.

She said her street was already polluted by traffic and argued this was not "being taken into account".

Residents fear increased noise and pollution as a result of the road widening on Spon End

Another resident, Judith Craig, said: "You can't hear properly, I've had to restructure my house that I live in. I can't live in the front part of it, because since Covid, we've had more traffic down here."

She said she had been leafletting people and organising petitions to stop the work, but the stress was starting to affect her.

Both pointed out the street was lined with listed properties.

One protester, Haydn Chick, climbed a tree on the road to stop it being cut down.

He said: "We need to look at the value of trees, the value of nature, we can't continually just carry on cutting mature trees down."

The city council said the work was aimed at reducing pollution from traffic stuck in queues

The city council said work had been suspended to "ensure that the protesters came to no harm".

It said it would now look at how to ensure people could choose to protest in a way that "does not put themselves, or anyone else, in harm's way".

It also promised to plant new trees to replace those that would be cut down.

The local authority said the work to widen the road was necessary to reduce queuing traffic at a pinch point, and it said it was important if pollution in the city was to be reduced.

Work to the city's road network was agreed with the government and the council said: "If our contractors continue to be prevented from carrying out this work then we run the risk that the government may choose to impose a Clean Air Zone on the city instead."