Calne firefighters have issued an urgent appeal for people parking in the town to make sure that they leave enough space for emergency vehicles to get through.

They have warned that careless parking can cause delays to fire engines and that could cost lives.

In a post on its Facebook page, the Calne Fire Station highlighted an incident last week when tight parking held up an emergency dash.

The firefighters posted: “On Thursday evening we JUST managed to get our fire appliance through a road in the Springfield Drive area.

“Although the cars were parked legally there was just centimetres for us to squeeze through, with this also on a bend which hampered us even more, and it took us a number of minutes. Had we been on a blue light run to an incident these minutes could cost lives.

“When parking please take a second and ask yourself ‘could emergency vehicles get through?’”