YOUR regular correspondent Bryan Wright (February 20) is entirely wrong with his claim that Inverclyde Council doesn’t intend to implement the new legislation on pavement parking.
Council officers have been developing our plans for some time and are progressing towards the implementation of the relevant orders and enforcement procedures with a target date of early 2025. Elected members recently received a briefing on these plans.
However, it should be recognised that as a small council Inverclyde does not have the same capacity as the big city councils to design our scheme or to enforce the ban.
Also, there will be many streets in Inverclyde where a ban would be impractical as it would prevent residents from parking in their own street. These streets will need to be exempted from the ban.
The ban on pavement parking is not intended to be a ‘money spinner’ for councils as Mr Wright thinks. The expectation of the Scottish Government is that any penalties levied will simply cover the costs of enforcement.
Edinburgh and Glasgow make many millions of pounds of profit each year from parking enforcement and have large numbers of enforcement officers who will enforce the pavement ban at the same time as they are enforcing other parking regulations, so they will incur limited additional costs.
In contrast Inverclyde makes a loss on parking enforcement, like some other councils, and we have a very small number of parking attendants available to enforce the existing parking regulations never mind the ban on pavement parking.
So, if Mr Wright is expecting the council to employ lots more parking attendants to drive around Inverclyde issuing penalty notices to drivers parking on pavements, generating millions for council coffers, he is going to be very disappointed.
Councillor Stephen McCabe
Leader of the Council
Elected Member
Inverclyde East (Ward 1)
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