Camden field work comes under fire
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• A Ford dealer has undertaken to move several hundred cars individually, rather than using car transporters, after complaints that its unloading operation was dangerous.
Camden Motors is temporarily using a field near its premises at Leighton Buzzard, Beds to store around 350 cars, because it cannot find anywhere else to put them.
But the delivery operation has been described as "highly dangerous" by the Leighton Buzzard and District Preservation Society. "It is intolerable that the police allowed the operation," says a spokesman.
The police provided the haulier, Carfax of Milton Keynes, with a warning sign after the society complained, but the sign was not used, claims the society. The lane, which links Leighton Buzzard with the A5, is "totally unsuitable" for such an operation, say the society: "If they had to deliver the cars they could have pulled out a couple of fence posts and got the lorries off the road."
It also believes that the field is being used illegally, as it is on Green Belt land and no planning permission exists.
Inspector Alison Macho — who is also a society member — dismissed criticism of the police: "We have had the full co-operation of Camden Motors and there will be no more transporters going to that field after Monday."
Camden director James Mercer said the entrance to the field was widened and strengthened especially to take the trucks. They should all have unloaded from the field, he says.