Police hand out 30 tickets amid warning

Police have said a parking problem in Linlithgow which has seen officers issue at least 30 parking tickets to drivers parking on zigzag lines in the High Street is caused by locals unwilling to pay to park.

Despite those getting a ticket facing a £100 fine and three points on their licence, it was suggested officers could have handed out double the number of tickets.

Community Sergeant Iain Wells told a meeting of the town’s Local Area Committee : “There is parking provision in the town. The locals don’t want to pay for it.”

Sgt Wells said that roads policing officers were regularly in the High Street handing out tickets

He was responding to committee chair, Councillor Tom Conn, who complained that he had received a “sanitised” letter from community officers regarding parking issues in the town when he had asked for more visible policing presence and enforcement.

He told the meeting that there were parking problems in the High Street “because there’s no deterrence.”

Councillor Conn suggested the Police

Scotland response was to suggest the council adopt decriminalised parking enforcement to allow the council to control parking, and the police to walk away.

Sgt Wells said that his roads policing colleagues “had conservatively “handed out 30 parking tickets recently.

“That’s mainly for the zigzags near to Taste and Boots, so that’s an expensive coffee – £100 fine and three points on your licence,” he added.

The officer said police regularly put messages out over social media as well as in local media such as the Black Bitch magazine concerning illegal and inconsiderate parking in the High Street.

Councillor Conn accepted that locals were the culprits and that a large number of tickets had been issued, “but the message is not getting through.”

Sgt Wells added that he had walked through the Vennel car park which is pay and display on three different days the week before – a Tuesday afternoon, Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

While other parking areas in the town were full there were around 70 spaces in the Vennel on each occasion.

“There’s adequate parking – the locals just don’t want to pay for it. We all know that,” he added.

He assured Councillor Conn that, compared with many other towns, Linlithgow had received a lot of attention from Roads Policing officers recently.

Driving through the High Street is difficult at most times of the day, not only because of the volume of traffic but because of dozens of cars parked inconsiderately, blocking sight lines or too close to junctions.

Parking on pavements is set to become illegal in Scotland next year and the council has already been asked for its views ahead of the law coming onto the Holyrood statute books.

The council’s own roads and transport managers have pointed out that responsibility for policing the new rules will fall to each council.

West Lothian is one of a few councils that does not operate decriminalised parking enforcement – where parking management is adopted by the local authority either employing its own wardens or contracting to private firms, rather than the police.

Police can only issue tickets in areas which are controlled by Traffic Regulation Orders such as zigzag lines. They cannot issue tickets for inconsiderate parking.

But in February, we reported that parking wardens could be coming back to West Lothian – whether councillors like it or not.

New Holyrood legislation will make it illegal to park on pavements, and the law requires councils to enforce that – not the police.

And this means that West Lothian will have to hire its own squad of enforcement staff, known in some parts as the “Blue Meanies”.

Around 18 local authorities, including neighbouring East Lothian and South Lanarkshire, already have parking enforcement – with the power to issue fixed penalty notices.

West Lothian, however, despite being plagued with parking problems in town centres and on housing estates, has none, since the role of police traffic wardens ended in 2014.

Police will only enforce against parking where vehicles block access to emergency vehicles.

Fuelling the move to what is known as Decriminalised Parking Enforcement (DPE) – where parking infringements are managed by local authorities rather than treated as offences by the police – is a delayed study into a parking strategy for the county, first commissioned prepandemic.

That re-activated study is likely to be concluded by late autumn.