Weavers Wharf issues warning to queuers after guard hit by car

The retail park has taken to social media to warn shoppers that security guards will be withdrawn from the car park, where they are currently working to manage traffic during peak periods, if staff continue to receive verbal abuse from customers.

Weavers Wharf is currently experiencing excessive queues to the site during peak times and at weekends and bosses say this has led to an increase in incidents of verbal abuse to car park staff.

The shopping centre manager posted on Facebook: "As you can imagine, as a retail and leisure business, we are facing huge challenges at present.

"We are doing everything we can to support our tenants so they are able to continue trading and continue to serve and support our community when things get back to normal.

"We are aware that there are excessive queues to the car park on certain days at peak times. We are using the CCTV to monitor this so we can get an accurate understanding of actual queue times.

"It is the responsibility of the individual businesses to manage their customers and queues in whatever format those queues may take.

"However, because of the unprecedented situation we are in, we are using the Weavers Wharf security team to manage the queues to the car park at the weekends, to assist our tenants.

"Unfortunately the guards have experienced verbal abuse from customers, Uber drivers and tenants' staff, including people driving at them whilst they are preforming their duties and driving the wrong way around the car park so they can leave via the entrance which could cause an accident.

"This irresponsible behaviour resulted in a car making contact with one of the guards on Saturday, February 20. The guard was shook up but physically okay."

The retail park went on to warn visitors that, if such incidents continue, "we will have no choice but to withdraw [the guards] from their car park management duties".

Weavers has now introduced a traffic management plan in a bid to improve the flow of traffic for people using the McDonald's drive-thru and those visiting the shops.

A post on social media went on to explain: "When there are excessive queues at the weekend, the traffic for the McDonald's drive-thru will be diverted through the car park to the back exit lane, leaving the first exit lane for retail customers to use to exit the car park.

"We do occasionally experience high volumes of traffic on the back lane so customers may be delayed leaving the car park.

"There is temporary signage around the car park directing McDonald's customers, as well as two guards assisting.

"At times, we have a very high volume of traffic and this is not an ideal solution. However, it is the best we can come up with in the short-term.

"Hopefully, when the retail and leisure industry stabilises, we can look at a long-term solution to the problem but at the moment completing major works to the only entrance and exit to the site would cause significantly more problems."

Weavers Wharf posted a diagram of the new traffic management plan, with red arrows showing the direction for McDonald's drive-thru customers and blue and white arrows for retail customers.

The new traffic management plan at Weavers Wharf Shopping Centre in Kidderminster