A SHOPKEEPER and a town-centre caretaker had a narrow escape after a driver crashed into the front of a store under renovation in Nelson.

Eileen Ansar, also a Pendle borough councillor, had been standing near the front window of the former Harry Garlick premises, in Scotland Road, moments before a Peugeot 306 came hurtling through the shutters.

MORE TOP STORIES:

Witness Graham Williams, Nelson Town Council’s lengthsman, was standing outside the shop, on his Monday-morning round, when he saw the incident unfold just after 9am yesterday.

Cllr Ansar, who was planning to open the clothing store next week, said yesterday: “We have been in here until 11pm every day, getting ready to open up a new shop. I was standing near the front door. My husband called me over to show me something.

“The next thing we knew the car had come crashing through the front. It was a lucky escape but it has spoiled all the hard work we had done up until this point.

“When the county council put in the turning circle, at the top of Scotland Road, we told them it was a daft idea.

“And we have no idea why there is not a bollard outside the shop. It was an accident waiting to happen.

“If this had been a normal shopping day, or a school day, with kids walking down to Shafi’s, who knows what might have happened.”

Mr Williams — who was tending to hanging baskets located around the town centre — watched as a Peugeot car approached the end of Scotland Road, just before The Shuttle public artwork in the heart of the town centre.

He said: “He (the driver) came down here at about 30mph and I thought he was not going to stop.

“The engine was still revving as the car was left in the front of the shop.

“I was standing right beside the window and if I had taken a few steps forward then I do not know what might have happened.

“I was still shaking as I carried on my round.”

A police spokesman confirmed that a local man had been arrested on suspicion of driving with excess alcohol.

No-one from Lancashire County Council highways was available yesterday to comment on the incident.