CAR parks at the Designer Outlet Village could be redesigned to tackle the congestion problems that have plagued drivers in Rodbourne in recent years.

Councillors heard traffic on Rodbourne Road was increasing again to pre-pandemic levels.

Coun Kevin Small told the borough council’s scrutiny committee that as someone who lived in the area he probably understood the difficulties better than anyone in the room. “The problem is the traffic on Great Western Way and getting out of Rodbourne Road.”

He and fellow Mannington and Western councillor Jim Robbins explained the difficulty in driving along Rodbourne Road and out on to Great Western Way via Bruce Street Bridges was getting worse and queues building up earlier and earlier.

Sometimes traffic is backed up as far as the Faringdon Road and Wescot Place roundabout.

Now the management of the complex has said it wants to address the issue.

Centre manager Tina Cumpstey said: “Since 2019, we have had new technology going into our car parks to speed up the process of getting consumers off the road and we continue to look at the design of our car parks.

“From our perspective, we are looking at potentially looking at redesigning our car parks to speed up getting the traffic off the road.”

Local democracy reporter Aled Thomas went to see for himself how bad the traffic is on Rodbourne Road.

He drove down the road three times and a journey that should have taken 90 seconds took seven minutes to complete.

He found himself in a queue caused by the difficulties getting on to the Bruce Street Bridges roundabout where part-time traffic signals operate.

You can see how Aled got on by clicking this link.

I drove down traffic-clogged Rodbourne Road (three times)

The council has said it will conduct a traffic survey to find out the best way of dealing with the issue.

In November 2018 in a meeting organised by Coun Small, council leader David Renard was told about the problems by people living in the area who complained of missing out on visits from children or grandchildren because they could not reach their streets through the traffic, and if they did they could not park.