The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Drivers face fines for parking on roadside verges or pavements
Cross-party support for new traffic plans being drawn up by council
Fi nes f or drivers who park on verges or pavements is set to be introduced by Peterborough City Council.
A city-wide ban is being drawn up by the council, but this will only be enforced in certain areas where local residents or the emergency services make a strong case that action needs to be taken.
A Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) which sets out the ban was approved last week by councillors on a scrutiny committee, albeit with a few recommendations which will now be looked at by the council’s cabinet.
Committee member Councillor Richard Ferris, Labour member for Park ward, said: “It’s unusual when you get cross-party support like we did at the meeting. It’s a massive issue in Park ward. It’s up there as one of the top half-adozen issues people contact me on.
“There are eight roads I can think of where there are verges which have been damaged to an extent.
“One of the things residents say is they do not want to lose the verges, butit’s often local residents who are parking on them.
“We have a lot of rented accommodation which is pushing up the number of vehicles - there’s not enough space so people just do it.
“It’s welcome that somebody has finally come forward with the TRO across the city.
“I’m in favour of introducing the TRO but I want to be convinced t here will be staff out there to enforce it.
“I do not want this to be kicked into the long grass, but it needs to be more robust.” The TRO was produced by the council’ s Verge Parking Action Group following a motion by Cllr Ed Murphy at a full council meeting. Cllr Murphy, Labour and Co- operative member for Ravensthorpe, said: “The council should use the powers they have got now to recover the costs incurred to repair damaged verges and pavements from vehicle owners that are damging hem.” But he dded: What ey have ome ack th now quite ong and should benefit residents in places I represent like Ravensthorpe and Netherton.
“I’ve also asked the council to identify ways they can create more parking spaces so people do not have to park on kerbs and verges, and the budget working party will be looking at resources for this.”
A council spokeswoman, responding to Cllr Murphy’s point about using fining powers, said: “This can be challenging to use as the council would need to provide considerable and detailed evidence linking damage to the highway to a particular person.
“As the nature of the damage is often cumulative and there are any number of highway users, the resources required to gather sufficient evidence to prosecute would be prohibitively costly.
“The new policy would allow the council to respond to residents’ issues at street level and, going forward, gives local people more of an active say in how parking is managed in their area.”
Cllr Nick Sandford, Liberal Democrat member for Past on and Walton, also welcomed the proposed TRO. He said: “There are some really cheap, physical measures they could put in place to discourage grass verge parking.
“In the Walton area, myself and Councillor Asif Shaheed put community funding towards tree planting on grass verges where there is a problem.
“It costs about £250 a tree, but if you put it in the right place it can be effective.”