ANXIOUS residents fear safety improvements to a road which has become a “living nightmare” could be delayed for a third time.

Residents have fought alongside councillors for the past year to see potentially life-saving changes made to the one-way system along Meadow Way, in Jaywick, where police surveillance identified one in six vehicles going in the wrong direction.

Tania Hart, 30, has lived at Meadow Way for 10 years.

Former neighbours Chris and Sarah Barrett sold their home when Mrs Barrett was nearly struck by a Tesco delivery van.

Mrs Hart is in constant fear of a fatality, and the death of her sister Phillipa Brannan in 1996, aged 16, after a crash in Buckinghamshire has left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Gazette:

Traumatised - Tania Hart lives in fear

She said: “Our lives will never be the same again. I was 10 at the time, we were walking home from a Christmas fayre in Amersham when a car mounted the pavement.

“It hit me first and then Phillipa, so I know the pain of losing someone through dangerous roads.

“In January, my husband was pulling out in his work van and a car came speeding towards us the wrong way. It was literally centimetres away from us.

“I’m pretty sure if it was a more affluent area it would have already been done. That’s how it feels to me, that there is a bias against Jaywick and it has been brushed under the carpet.”

The £4,000 scheme was signed off last October so the island directing traffic up Meadow Way and into Beach Crescent, could be extended.

The idea is to make it more difficult for drivers, including delivery vans and rubbish collectors contracted by Essex Council, to ignore no-entry signs.

A driver who cut through the one-way system in February 2016 was issued with a formal verbal warning.

A spokesman for Essex Highways said: “After residents objected to removing the one-way system, a plan to make it work by preventing vehicles turning left around the barrier and continuing north-east along Meadow Way is being put in place.

“The Highways Panel has decided on urgent action to build the kerb line further out and put in extra chevron signs, forcing vehicles to follow the correct route into Beach Crescent.

“Work to put in the new kerb and signs and then improve the road surface is planned to start in March.

“The Highways Panel is confident funding can be found for this urgent safety work, and a detailed budget will be presented to the Local Highways Panel as soon as possible.”