1 October (Part 1) - The minutiae of parking rules are complicated
There was a train strike yesterday
which means that London bound travellers flock to the Elizabeth line and Abbey
Wood’s parking misery extends to the weekend.
The roads within the CPZ which are usually kept reasonably clear thanks to the
11-1 time restriction become crowded on strike afflicted weekends because it only operates Monday to Friday.
Nearer to home, that is, just outside the CPZ, a few of my neighbours pick up parking tickets
almost daily. They did on Thursday, could have had one on Friday but were
miraculously spared and yesterday they were fined again after returning home and
finding nowhere to park in their own road or any adjacent one.
The rebellious streak in me says they should park in the road and block it
because then they would be outside the Council’s jurisdiction and there is
little chance of the police getting off of their lazy arses. The only time I made a report of a blocked road a
very rude and
ignorant police woman (Officer 244CC) insisted that blocked roads are a Council responsibility.
For as long as Bexley Council chooses to do nothing to face up to the Liz line
parking issues it failed to see coming it will probably be raised here from time to time.
In one of several conversations with an enforcement officer
a neighbour
asked in my presence what could be done about people parking across driveways. His question
wasn’t from the usual angle, his interest arose from the fact that he is engaged
in a long term building project and it is convenient for contractors and
delivery vehicles to park across his dropped kerb.
It was explained to him that if the dropped kerb is registered with the Council,
and very few are, any car in front of it would be ticketed on sight without
reference as to who the vehicle might belong to.
On unregistered dropped kerbs, like the concerned neighbour’s, no ticket would
ever be issued for the same reason - but in reverse. The assumption would be
that the vehicle belonged to the home owner or in some way associated with him.
My neighbour was reassured that his builders were safe from penalties.
It was this information that formed the basis of
a recent
blog which caused a reader to draw my attention to
the Council’s dropped kerb guidance.
My drive is registered because it is only one car wide and is for my use only. Next door and
the house beyond it have a double width dropped kerb with the complication that part of it goes around a right angled bend.
It does not qualify as a shared drive because the requirement of “usually wide enough
for single vehicle access by two or more residents” excludes it. It is wider than “single vehicle access”.
As such the assumption is that it cannot be registered for parking enforcement
but thanks to Bexley Council’s stupid road planning that may be arguable.
The kerb guidance goes on to say that a PCN can be issued to any vehicle parked in
front of a shared or pedestrian dropped kerb, the latter being street corners etc. But next
door the drives are not strictly shared by virtue of their width although the unusable bit around the right angled bend makes sharing a necessity.
The final guidance paragraph is more useful. As the CEO said to my neighbour and me they
will not routinely ticket a car in front of a residential dropped kerb because
it may be there with the permission of the home owner but they might do so on receipt of a report from the resident.
One wonders how the reporting source might be identified but the BiB reader’s contention that action might be taken against single access drive
blocking looks to be correct. However the fact remains that Bexley Council more than once refused to help my immediate neighbour.