Parking On The Footpath - Heston Residents Association

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Heston through the ages
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Parking On The Footpath

It has become common practice for drivers to park in various parts of the borough with two or four wheels on the footpath. There is a London wide ban on parking on the footpath unless there are marked bays and a sign to indicate that parking on the pavement is permitted within the marked bays. It may be the case that there are places where the impact of footpath parking is acceptable. Equally there are situations where footpath parking prevents residents and pedestrians from reasonable use of the footpath. There is an additional problem where vehicles parked on the footpath are commercial vehicles rather than private cars because of the impact on visibility for residents entering or leaving their own driveways.

The Councils current procedure for dealing with complaints about vehicles parked inappropriately on the footpath appears to be arbitrary and unaccountable. The procedure appears to be based on an enforcement officer taking a picture of the subject vehicle which is then transmitted to an office-based supervisor to decide whether a parking ticket should be issued. Where the supervisor decides that issuing a parking ticket would not be appropriate the complainant has no recourse to any details of the Council’s procedures for deciding when a parking ticket should be issued and therefore no opportunity to challenge the decision. The absence of bay markings means that the decision about whether the vehicle is parked in an acceptable way is just a matter of opinion rather than one of compliance with the appropriate rules. The process lacks transparency and is arbitrary.

HRA has submitted a Freedom of Information request for:

a copy of the council’s operating procedures in respect of footpath parking.

the date of the meeting of the Borough Council at which it was decided that the London-wide ban on footpath parking would not be enforced in some locations.

The PFI contract with Hounslow Highways resulted in a number of footpaths being re-surfaced. It is the case that in some locations where parking on the pavement was authorised by a sign and marked bays, the bay markings that were visible before the re-surfacing were not reconstituted after the re-surfacing.

HRA has requested details of how this issue was addressed in the PFI contract.

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