Trolley troubles for pretty London Colney road

An Alsop Close resident, who does not wish to be named, has been plagued by dumped Sainsbury’s trolleys ever since she moved in four years ago but despite her regular complaints to the London Colney supermarket, she says the problem has only got worse with time.

“Over the past couple of days, I have counted 12 dumped Sainsbury’s trolleys in Alsop Close. But the last time I rang up to complain about it, I was put through to the supermarket’s caf� manager!

“They always promise to come out and collect them within the next couple of hours but that never happens and the trolleys often stay where they are for days on end.”

The resident, who sometimes complains every other day, said that it was not just her road that was affected: “Shoppers also dump their trolleys in the local children’s play area, and you often find them in Broad Colney Lakes on Shenley Lane. What’s worse is the fact that kids often race around in them at night, and I had a neighbour whose car was damaged when the wind blew a trolley into it.”

She said that during a recent telephone conversation, Sainsbury’s store manager told her that the supermarket chain could not afford to buy magnetic technology used by other stores – including Asda in Hatfield – which automatically locks the wheels of supermarket trolleys when they are beyond a certain parameter.

She added: “This is clearly a problem and one which I assume affects the whole country if Sainsbury’s doesn’t use such technology as a rule of thumb. It’s really frustrating and the dumped trolleys are so unsightly.

“Sometimes they’ll send a van to come and collect them once a week, but to be honest that just isn’t enough for the volume we get.”

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “We know that despite our best efforts abandoned shopping trolleys can be a problem in some areas. We take any complaints like this very seriously and we will be sending out specialist retrieval teams to pick up the trolleys as soon as possible.”