Police call for mayhem at ‘beautiful’ Birmingham park as residents say it’s ‘too late’

Police were called after parking chaos broke out at a popular park in Birmingham. Dozens of cars were parked in the pedestrian area of ​​Cannon Hill Park on Bank Holiday Monday after it was understood an access gate had been left open.

A large number of cars began to gather at the popular family venue on Monday afternoon, May 6. The gate is normally closed to the public and only opened to provide access for emergency service vehicles.

Cars were thrown between ancient plants and trees and all over the green space intended for families and dog walkers. A Range Rover was photographed parked across the pavement and on double yellow lines, while another BMW was thrown between two trees.

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Birmingham City Council told BirminghamLive it was looking at how it could “fix the problem”. Images of the invasion were shared on X, formerly Twitter by @NoseleyVillage, whose post of cars on grass verges and picnic areas gained more than 110,000 views.

The community activist wrote: “Cannon Hill Park today after members of the public found an emergency access gate open and took the opportunity to get in, around and park in the park itself. The police attended but were unable to do anything because there were “too many cars”.

A resident who lives opposite the park and watched the chaos unfold after seeing cars drive into the green space told BirminghamLive: “There are some gates that the park rangers use and they can be opened for any emergency.

“There is some chaos on good days anyway, this has been exacerbated by roadworks. There are no consequences. By the time (law enforcement) officers show up, it’s way too late. There is a rather unpleasant attitude around any kind. of execution.”

When asked what the atmosphere was like, he replied: “Raised anger, (there was a) minority of really unpleasant people. I have to witness chaos every day.

“It’s happened before, it happened last year during the hot days. The gates are normally closed. Anti-social behaviour, there’s always a lot of noise. People lose each other.

“People are quite threatening.” The resident said he contacted the council and the police several times and was pushed between the two. The resident called police at 4pm and officers arrived 20 minutes later but are understood to have left shortly after.

The frustrated resident continued: “They saw the situation and said they couldn’t do anything because there were too many people. Cars put people in danger. We started to see the cars disappearing and we thought: ‘Let’s have a look’. Canon Hill Park is such a beautiful place, you get used to it, but there is absolutely no management (there is) very little signage around where parking needs to be monitored.”

He added that drivers urgently need to change their habits so that scenes like Monday’s can be prevented. Coun Majid Mahmood, Birmingham’s head of environment, said: “We are looking at how the gates have been left open as a number of people have access to the park and how we can fix this problem in the future. We remind drivers that the emergency access gates are just that and should not be used to access the park, even if they are open, and should use the car park instead.”

West Midlands Police have been contacted for comment.

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