AN Irvine woman fears someone could be seriously injured because of heavy traffic heading into Bartonholm Recycling Centre.

Former employee Shirley Sands fears there will be an accident following recent queues of traffic to access the dump on Sandy Road.

Last week, the Times told how cars were seen lining up outside Bartonholm following the closure of the Dreghorn dump due to budget cuts.

And Shirley believes this is only the beginning insisting there could be a serious accident on the A78 bypass access to the site.

Speaking to the Times, she said: “My main concern is traffic backing up at the bypass.

“The council said it was a one-off but it’s not it happens quite a lot and did when I worked at Dreghorn.

“Before people from Dreghorn, Bourtreehill, Drybridge, Springside all used to use the Dreghorn site but now they’re all going to Bartonholm, the machines can only fill so far then they need to be crushed.

“It’s not going to work long-term, sometimes at Dreghorn we had to shut the gates because all the skips were full so imagine what it’s going to be like now.”

The Bencleuch Place resident added: “You could see from the photos that the gates weren’t shut and a guy was just directing traffic.

“I couldn’t believe that they actually spent money to re-line all the lanes at Dreghorn.

“Why did they spend that money if they were going to shut it? They probably had money they had to get rid of.

“Somebody is going to get injured at Bartonholm, the traffic is only going to build up and build up.”

But North Ayrshire Council say they are not expecting any further issues at Bartonholm.

A spokesperson for the council said this week: “We are confident that the technical issues which resulted in small queues of around nine to 12 cars during peak times on Sunday, April 3, have now been fully resolved.

“Arrangements have been put in place to ensure the expected increase in demand does not pose any further issues.

“The compactors at Bartonholm are now fully functional and the site is operating as normal, which should eliminate any potential delays for visitors to the site.”