Last Autumn local Conservatives put out 1000's of surveys both on paper and digitally across Stourbridge and Halesowen. After collating the results from the replies we forwarded the concerns of local residents to the Council to take a look at.
Worryingly, many residents that took part in the survey highlighted a common issue that has over the past couple of years become increasingly common in our communities. Modified 4x4s and off-road motorbikes are ruining, our green open space and parks.
One incident saw a dark green 4x4 after coming out of Park Road Cradley hurtle up the bank narrowly missing community volunteers that were litter picking at the time.
Police were informed by the group but due to the speed at which the incident happened the witnesses were unable to note down the vehicles registration.
Local Campaigner for Cradley Natalie Neale expressed the view that:
“while I fully understand that young people are finding things hard at the moment due to the pandemic and restrictions being imposed on them but that is no excuse to take it upon themselves to endanger other people’s lives in this way and ruin our green spaces like this".
Consequently, Natalie has taken action and reported incidents to the council and has requested a solution to stop any repetition of this type of activity from happening.
“It is totally unacceptable behaviour. This Green Space is not a track for vehicles, and most importantly allowing this to continue will undoubtedly result in an accident”.
Other local areas that have suffered from type of vandalism has been Homer Hill Park, where the football pitches were also ruined by Modified 4x4s and cost the Tax payer £1000s to put right and impacted heavily on the leisure time of many local young and old footballers.
Additionally, Wollescotes Stevens park is also suffering from vandalism by both 4x4s and off-road motorbikes. Here there has been a number of registrations passed onto to the authorities, but unfortunately off-road type motorbikes don’t have registration plates. Nonetheless thanks to the parks CCTV 2 persistent users have been identified and the police are proactively monitoring the situation.
As you can see from the image this is not an isolated incident. So please if you have spare time and have seen this type of incident or any other off-road motorbikes on the road or on our parks, please let us know by taking part in our short survey.
By taking part, you will be helping us in trying to bring in Bylaws for the Borough, to make it illegal to drive or ride motorised vehicles off road, on public land.