I AM a creature of habit. Once I find something that works for me, I tend to stick with it.

I have a very precise morning routine.

I know how long it takes to shower, get dressed, have my breakfast and get out of the house in time to get me to work.

Well actually, all things being equal, my schedule will actually get me to work early.

You see I live around two and a half miles from where I work (I know this because my satnav tells me so).

And the other thing my satnav says is the journey should take me around 10 minutes.

But experience dictates that timing is wildly optimistic – this is Warrington after all.

My problem (one I've mentioned before) is I live on the Penketh side of town and have to get through Bridgefoot during the morning rush hour.

So instead of allowing 10 minutes for the journey, I actually allow 30 just to be on the safe side.

Which brings us to the school summer holidays.

There are a number of benefits of not having school-age children at home.

One is I can take my holidays out of peak season and another is that when school's out, the town's roads are appreciably quieter, and therefore my morning commute is quicker.

Well, that's the theory.

This summer, things seemed a little different. My route takes me past Bank Quay station and down Wilson Patten Street and even at the peak of the holiday season, traffic was still queued and slow moving all the way to the traffic lights by The Academy.

Now I'm no traffic planner (I think you need specialist qualifications for that) but it did look very much like the traffic lights had been changed to allow far fewer cars through onto the Bridgefoot gyratory system.

The effect of that was to remove congestion on the Bridgefoot roundabout but this was only achieved by backing up traffic all the way to the Pink Eye roundabout.

My heart sank.

If it was this bad during the holidays, how bad would it be when the schools went back and everyone returned to work, I wondered.

Well, I've had my answer – very bad indeed and probably the worst I've seen it.

That 10-minute journey is now taking around an hour. Honestly, its no joke.

I've got nothing against Go Outdoors but I really don't want to be sat in my car, looking at its bedraggled display of tents for quarter of an hour without moving.

I know there are plans to alleviate Bridgefoot congestion by opening up Slutchers Lane to through traffic and the Western Link will help if and when it happens but in reality, something needs to be done now and done quickly.

At the very least, I would hope our highways bods could have a look at the timings off the lights.

  • Catching up on a few things I'd missed over the summer, I came across the stories written by Local Democracy Reporter Aran Dhillon about the Hatters Row fiasco.

In case you missed it, the council is locked into an extraordinarily bad deal for Hatters Row which will cost the council (and therefore cost us) almost £10.5 million over the next century.

Basically, the council pays a lease fee of £109,000 a year Hatters Row and then pockets the rents from the shop owners. But since 2011-12, the council has made a staggering £548,655..

Chief executive Steven Broomhead patently isn't happy about it and told Aran: "Unfortunately, those individuals who were involved in this are no longer with us, they have deceased."

There's an arrangement in English law called a Trial of Facts which takes place when the accused can't reasonably stand trial (these days usually because they are suffering from dementia).

I think some kind of 'trial of facts' about Hatters Row would be welcomed by the hard-pressed council taxpayers of Warrington.