Parking rules - the facts
11:30am Tuesday 15th July 2008
BEFORE we scare everyone away from visiting the town centres of Kidderminster, Stourport and Bewdley for fear of being pounced on by a parking officer, can I, as cabinet member for the section which covers parking, clarify a few points on how the district council enforces parking?
The only reason we have to monitor blue badges is because thousands throughout the UK are used by people who are not entitled to do so. This happens, for example, when badges are lost or stolen. In respect of a recent report on an issue in Bewdley, we would only put one parking ticket on a vehicle at any one time and only one per day. A second ticket would only be issued if the first ticket had been removed but the vehicle hadn’t.
If the vehicle was still incorrectly parked after three days, checks would be made to see if it had been abandoned.
All parking tickets include appeal details on them to help any person who feels a ticket has been incorrectly issued.
Finally, our parking officers are not targeted to issue a certain number of tickets per day. They patrol areas constantly but do not wait to ‘pounce’ on vehicles that go five minutes over time. The council does not make any money from parking fines. Enforcement is to ensure optimum use of spaces to enable people to be able to park where they want to, for the length of time they need. It is also done to promote traffic flow. Enforcing parking means that free, short stay spaces are used correctly.
This allows many more people per day to make short visits to our town centres to help our centres thrive.
Understandably, no-one likes to receive parking tickets and, to avoid this, I would urge residents to read and follow blue badge and parking signage details.
TRACEY ONSLOW Cabinet member for operational services, Wyre Forest District Council