Tesco's express way to hell

We were delighted to hear that a Tesco Express/Esso Petrol Station was arriving in Rotherham at the bottom of Fenton Road last year.

We have used the Tesco on regular occasions since its opening as we like to use Tesco for our shopping and it is more convenient than going into the main town centre. Also it gives us the opportunity to fill up with petrol.

However, the organisation of the petrol/shop has been cause for concern since its opening and we are surprised that we have not been involved in a serious accident, as we have come close on many occasions, entering or leaving the premises. The problems have occured due to the bad layout of the parking and also the two entrances/exits to the shop/petrol station. The petrol station/shop is entered via two separate entrances/exits which are from different roads, however, this results in cars being head on to each other at the petrol pumps and being unable to move away from the pump. This causes tailbacks onto the main road which is the major access route onto the roundabout.

The two areas for parking for the store are at two separate ends of the petrol stations and due to the tailbacks at the pumps often you are unable to get to them.

It is apparent that this has also been raised by other members of the public as some efforts have been made to restrict the entrance to entry/exit but this is not policed by the staff and therefore is of no use as many of the users of the petrol station/shop do not adhere to it. The security guard is there, as explained to us today, for drive offs and nothing further.

On our last two visits at key times there has been various sections stopped up by cones. The first cordoned off the bottom car park being that there was nowhere to park the car and therefore had to wait, leading again to tailbacks onto the road. People start to get annoyed and just reverse their cars back into the main road in an attempt to get out but this leads to further problems and potential accidents.

Today, upon entering the car park all but two of the petrol pumps had cones left next to them but it was not clear if the petrol pumps were empty/out of order etc. We spoke to the security guard who advised he was unsure as to why they had cut off the petrol to those pumps. This meant that we ended up having to park up in front of the other car, preventing her from leaving the car park until we returned - after we had purchased our food shopping. Our choice was to wait in the long queues to pay for our petrol, move the car and drive out of the car park and back in to repark to purchase our dinner or to buy our dinner. We where too scared that the security guard would think we stealing the petrol if we had moved the car into the car park before paying.

This is becoming a regular occurrence which is causing a lot of undue stress when going for a pint of milk. It is obvious that the people attending the shop are getting very annoyed and this is coming out in their driving. We really do not want to stop using the shop - we really do like Tesco and the convenience of attending the local shop but we sure that something could be done to ensure that the one way system is imposed - surely the problems were obvious when the designs were being discussed.

We do hope that you will be able to address these concerns and enable the local Tesco Express to be a safe environment for its visitors.