Skipton car park closure extended after unexpected problems (From Craven Herald)

Skipton car park closure extended after unexpected problems

10:06am Thursday 7th March 2013 in News

Work takes place at the Coach Street car park

The whole of the Gargrave Road section of Skipton’s Coach Street Car Park is to close for at least 11 weeks.

Yorkshire Water, which is building an underground storm water tank beneath the car park, said this week that the closure, which will be in place during the Waterway Festival, was necessary because of unexpected problems.

The remaining 249 spaces in the section of the car park next to the Canal Basin will remain open as normal and the whole project should now be complete by July – a month later than first thought.

It is due to close on Monday, with around 30 spaces of the total 164 due to come back into use towards the end of May.

The company, which started work on the £1 million project in January, originally thought it would take around six months to complete and that only up to half of the Gargrave Road section of the Coach Street car park would have to be closed.

But work has been held up after foundations of old buildings and service cabling were discovered under the ground. It has meant workmen have had to hand dig excavations instead of using machinery.

Richard Mashiter, who runs Craven Stationery in Coach Street, said he was keen to see the project completed as soon as possible and could see the benefit in closing all of the Gargrave Road section of the car park to allow the workmen to proceed more quickly.

“Businesses have not been affected. I’ve been keeping an eye on the car parking, and the car parks have not been full. At the moment, they are having to do it in bits and pieces, and this way they can get on a lot more quickly,” he said.

Dominic Cunney, Yorkshire Water’s project manager, said: “We have tried hard to keep as much of the car park open as possible. However, due to the difficulties we’ve had and the size of the crane needed to build the storage tank, it is a much safer option to close the section of car park altogether for this short period.”

Hazel Smith, asset and project manager at Craven District Council, said the council had worked with Yorkshire Water throughout the project. “We acknowledge that this change to the car park will be disruptive; however we have insisted that Yorkshire Water do everything they can to complete this project as soon as possible.

“We’ve highlighted that there are several events during the summer that could be affected and they have assured us they will work with us to try mitigate this where possible.”

The building of the underground storage tank is being done to limit the risk of sewer flooding into 13 nearby homes.