CHRISTMAS shoppers descending on a busy shopping centre are causing traffic chaos at peak times. Residents are finding it impossible to get in or out of London Colney as a result of the amount of traffic heading to and from the Colney Fields shopping cent

CHRISTMAS shoppers descending on a busy shopping centre are causing traffic chaos at peak times.

Residents are finding it impossible to get in or out of London Colney as a result of the amount of traffic heading to and from the Colney Fields shopping centre.

The nearby roundabouts leading onto main roads are so clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic that residents claim no-one can get in or out of the Barnet Road site.

Malcolm Macmillan, chairman of London Colney Parish Council, said he was going to approach Herts County Council's highways authority about the problem.

He said: "I want them to get the site to provide people to manage traffic moving in and out of the site so that it can be staggered. The main problem of gridlocking occurs when too many cars join the queues onto the roundabouts causing a complete standstill. If cars were filtered out slowly it would lessen the pressure."

Sainsbury's, which owns most of the Colney Fields car park, applied for permission to install temporary car parking but it was refused last week on the grounds that there was no way of judging its effect on traffic and road safety.

Cllr Macmillan said: "The problem is the existing volume of traffic and issues of road safety. There were also concerns that it could set a precedent making it difficult for the authority to resist a more permanent structure."

A spokesperson for Sainsbury's said six car-park marshalls were due to start work at the store at the weekend to help keep the traffic moving in and out of the car park.

They would be employed seven days a week from 10am to 8pm up to and including Christmas.

He understood additional staff were taken on for the same purpose this time last year.