Closed
Parked on pavement forcing pedestrians into the road
Sent to West Northamptonshire Council less than a minute later. ref: 8949909.
Inconsiderate parking particularly as this road is used by mother's with buggies.
Updates
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This is a national problem, and the Department for Transport has been looking into this issue for some time and we are waiting the outcome of the consultation that they carried out for us to consider this matter further as currently parking on the pavement is not illegal outside of London, unless specifically prohibited by a local authority (either street-by-street or zonally); the prohibition requiring a formal Traffic Regulation Order (TRO), although we do fully understand the concerns that this has within the local community. The following link is the most up to date information that is available Managing pavement parking - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
They have now published the outcome of the consultation and confirmed that they will proceed with Option 2: enabling local authorities to enforce against ‘unnecessary obstruction’ of the pavement.
This new enforcement power has not yet taken effect. It is expected to begin sometime in 2026, once the required secondary legislation has been laid before Parliament and formally comes into force.
The measure is intended as an interim step ahead of wider primary legislation that will follow.
In addition, the government will publish Statutory Guidance later in 2026 to clarify how councils should apply these new powers.
In January 2024 we extended our parking enforcement to include parking in front of dropped kerbs, so our Civil Enforcement Officers are now issuing Penalty Charge Notices to any vehicles that are found to be parking in this way.
For our Civil Enforcement Officers to issue a Penalty Charge Notice they would need to be present and observe the vehicles parking for longer than 20 minutes. Regrettably, due to the geographical area that our Enforcement Officer’s cover it is not possible to remain in one location for a prolonged period, therefore there will unfortunately always be occasions where vehicles will park in contravention of the restrictions in place without receiving a Penalty Charge Notice.
Our enforcement officers cannot be at this location every week to monitor the vehicles so you may wish to contact the police as they would have the ability to decide on taking appropriate action against drivers that may be breaking road traffic laws and parking in a way that causes obstruction.
I do appreciate that this does not resolve the issue but until we get confirmation from the Government review, we can only enforce areas that have a valid Traffic Regulation Order in place.
This report is now closed to updates from the public. You can make a new report in the same location.