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Church News

Welsh church forks out £1,000's for damages caused by lorry drivers

by Alex Collett

A church in Wales is repeatedly spending thousands of pounds and claiming on their insurance for damage that HGV lorry drivers are causing to their site.

St Tudor's church in Mynyddislwyn, Caerphilly borough is based on a steep hill and sees numerous lorries stuck on it’s boundary wall surrounding the graveyard and is causing damage of over £6,000.

Reverend Mark Owen spoke to Premier and expressed how this situation keeps happening, he said: “The problem is the lorries try to go to nine mile point and they follow their Sat Navs which instead of going straight down the road to the industrial estate it takes them on the side of the mountain and of course it is so narrow when you get to the top of this point.

“There is one point where they can turn around but if they pass that point, then they can’t turn around, so they find themselves blocked in to this kind of horseshoe.

“Then they get into a panic because they can’t reverse and when they do try to reverse they knock the dry stone wall down.”

Reverend Owen expressed his frustration with how many times this has now happened and how much it is costing them, he said: “The wall has been knocked now about 15 times and of course out of all those times, only twice that we have actually been able to catch the person that has done it, to make a counter claim against their insurance, rather than against our church insurance.

“We have probably spent in the region of £6,000 just repairing the wall, because we have to get a specialist dry stone tradesmen in to do it and there are not many of these around.

“What we are planning to do is to get some CCTV installed if we can get a faculty to do it as it’s an ancient building.”

A GoFundme page has now been set up with a £6,000 target to install CCTV.

Despite the damage, Owen says he's praying for those responsible: “We do pray for these lorry drivers they are not from this country and they don’t speak our language.

“They are relying on their Sat Navs, but we do pray for them because if they do get past the church and go down the hill on the other side of the mountain, it is treacherous.”

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