OBJECTORS hope a footpath can put a spanner in the works for Gulliver's.

The theme park bosses want to build a new site and a hotel - but residents are trying to get a path adopted as a public highway, which could stop or impinge on building work.

The campaigners hope to secure highways status for Old Camp Road across the old Burtonwood airbase.

For pathways to be adopted, they need to have been used as access from one public area to another for more than 20 years, and the land must not have been treated as privately owned.

Gulliver's tried to get plans for the park and an 80-bedroom hotel passed last year but it was voted down by Warrington Borough Council planners last year.

The proposed heritage park would have put an extra 1,600 cars on the roads every week.

Now, Gulliver's is appealing against the decision and a public inquiry is due.

Old Camp Road cuts across the site. If evidence can be gathered, the application to make it a public highway would go before the council's traffic committee, possibly at its next meeting in September.

Clr Judith Wheeler, who represents Great Sankey North, said: "I am anxious that any development in the area will not destroy the right of people to walk across Old Camp Road as they have done for years.

"This is why we are trying to get Warrington Borough Council to adopt it as a public right of way."

Phil Johnson, the council's head of service for transportation, said: "We have received an application to recognise and record as a public footpath a path running alongside Camp Road, Callands, from Shackleton Close continuing to the Sankey Valley Park entrance.

"This application will be investigated during the next few months with a view to reporting our findings, along with a recommendation, to the council's traffic committee later in the year."