Heavy traffic on A29 and A259 as Butlin’s reopens

Traffic was unusually heavy on the A29 and A259 near Shripney, Rowan Way and Flansham today as Butlins reopened for the first time in five months.

Jeremy Pardey the resort director at Butlin’s, Bognor Regis confirmed the reports: “I’m sure we did have something to do with it. I think what’s been interesting is, normally our guests turn up over a period of time but, with the lockdown I think they’ve all chosen to come early,” He said

Mr Pardey said that 85 percent of the resort’s guests checked in before three o’clock today. On a normal day, only 35-40 per cent of the resort’s guests have checked in by that time.

“The speed of our guests arriving caused a little bit of a problem this morning, but we’ve dealt with it and we’re back to square one now,” Mr Pardey said.

To resolve the issue, the Butlin’s team reversed their queuing system, allowing more cars to queue in the resort rather than outside of it.

Although the team plans on continuing to use this strategy over the next few days, Mr Pardey thinks this will be a temporary problem. He said: “People will naturally return to their arrival times in a different way. Just because this is the first time everyone has been able to come out, they’ve decided to come out early. So I anticipate that will change but we’ve got a review meeting going on this afternoon to see how we’re going to manage it going forward.”