'Except for access'

What do the words 'Except for access' mean when you see them on a sign at the side of the road? Here is a photograph of a street in Hyde with a signpost with those words on it:

Below is a close-up of the sign

Now to me the 'No vehicles Except for access' means that vehicles are only allowed to pass this sign if they are making a delivery to any premises within the prohibited zone, which is shown on the Google earth picture below:

The sign shown above is on Hamnett Street, just to the right of centre, and the prohibited zone is the red-brick part of the road which loops round onto Market Place and then back again onto John Street, to the left of centre. The parts of Market Place to the right and left of the red-brick zone are fully pedestrianised.

This is a photograph taken looking along Market Place and shows a van which is (apparently) making a delivery to one of the shops and which the sign allows it to do. But it seems that a large number of motorists car drivers think that the restriction shouldn't apply to them either.

Here are three more photographs:

Not all the photographs above were taken on the same day, but the last three were and in such quick succession that my camera records all three to have been taken at 11:34am. The black car in the first photograph dropped off a passenger who seems to have gone into the Farmfoods shop whilst the driver sat waiting in the car. The taxi in the second photograph dropped off two young ladies who sauntered across the road and possibly into the shopping mall behind the shops on the right. The car in the third photograph also stopped to drop off passengers but I didn't see where they went. It strikes me that the kind of person who ignores these 'no access' signs is the same person who doesn't see a double yellow line as meaning 'no parking at any time' but that 'this stretch of road is reserved exclusively for you to park on'.