FRUSTRATED families say they are being treated as second-class citizens after being banned from parking outside their homes to allow hungry customers to queue up for a McDonald’s.

Southend Council put parking restrictions in place for two weeks for the whole of Cokefield Avenue and Pantile Avenue for the re-opening of Eastern Avenue McDonald’s drive-thru last Wednesday.

But the scheme has caused a host of problems for residents, who are now calling for action.

One man explained how his elderly neighbour was forced to change the arrangements of her son’s funeral after the parking restrictions meant his hearse was unable to depart from her house and alternative arrangements had to be made.

The queues have also led to a crash, which happened after a woman inadvertently joined the queue thinking she was simply sitting in traffic.

Terry Clark, 66, said: “We are starting to feel like second-class citizens.

People haven’t even been able to get deliveries because of the parking restrictions.

“Some of the elderly people down here rely on them, and on family and friends to drop off shopping.”

Now Trevor Curtis, of Cokefield Avenue, has decided enough is enough and has launched a petition calling for Southend Council to scrap the ban, put in place initially for 14 days.

He said: “We don’t want this anymore, it’s causing too many problems.

“My elderly neighbour told me that her son’s hearse was having to go from her daughter’s house to the funeral because of the parking restrictions.

“And on Thursday afternoon, my wife witnessed a car accident right outside the house.

“The police told me they would supervise the traffic when the queue gets long but they are not doing that, I had to phone them up and remind them.”

Mr Curtis added: “The woman who crashed was in tears. She had joined the McDonald’s queue without realising and when she tried to drive off, a car came down forcing her to reverse and because the gap where she was had closed up she ended up reversing straight into a car.

“There were no marshals to help with the flow of traffic.”

The campaigner is also concerned that when the children go back to school, they will be in danger when walking down Cokefield Avenue.

So far, Mr Curtis has managed to get 58 signatures from residents and is hoping to get more in a bid to get things back to normal.

'We'll bin scheme as soon as we can'

A SOUTHEND councillor says the authority hopes to remove the controversial 14-day parking ban around the newly-re-opened McDonald’s as soon as possible.

Ron Woodley, cabinet member for transport, said: “When it was announced that McDonald’s were to reopen all their drive thru restaurants to the public, and following well documented scenes of issues across the country, we were rightly asked by Essex Police to put the temporary parking suspensions in place to support the queueing system.

"We were asked to take potential queues away from Eastern Avenue and Royal Artillery Way, a major route from the east of town.

“While some parking has been temporarily suspended, parking beyond the kerb on the hardened verges has not been and measures are being reduced and removed as soon as possible.

"We know that some residents have been unhappy with this, and we do apologise for the inconvenience caused.

"We aim to remove the parking suspensions as soon as possible.

“However, we were asked by the police to assist with this plan. If we had not, we would have been ignoring a police request for support and criticised for doing nothing."