A final decision on whether to bring in traffic wardens to help control parking problems in towns and villages across West Lothian is 'literally miles away', a senior councillor has warned.
The introduction of Decriminalised Parking Enforcement (DPE) to the county is among the options being considered by the council.
If agreed it would shift parking enforcement away from the police and give the council the control to impose fines and even confiscate vehicles. As one of the report’s authors said: “It gives the council powers. It allows things to be targeted as required.”
READ MORE: West Lothian drivers park in disabled bays as police issue 20 tickets in last fortnight
It would mean the return of parking wardens after more than a decade and controls on town centres which have become plagued by inconsiderate parking. Demands on police time mean regulations have so far only been enforced by police “blitzes” on town centres including Bathgate and Linlithgow.
The parking strategy consultation authors agreed that, whatever comes in the future, it will also rely on resources - the number of staff - to police parking rules.
Any parking strategy would not be cheap however, and could take up to three years to bring in.
In a report to the Environment and Sustainability Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel (PDSP) on Tuesday, Roads Network Manager Gordon Brown said: “To introduce a DPE regime would take in the region of 2-3 years to implement.
“It would make a financial deficit initially, however it is difficult to predict due to a considerable level of assumptions made to determine income and expenditure. There still remains a risk that the implementation of a DPE regime in West Lothian would continue to deliver an annual deficit as penalties issued would reduce due to an increase in public compliance with parking restrictions.”
Mr Brown’s report added: “There are two options. The first is DPE is delivered and managed by the council independently. The investment required for DPE is estimated to be in the region of £490,000 for one off initial scheme set up with annual estimated cost implications of £246,000.
“The second option would be DPE delivered in partnership with a neighbouring local authority. The investment required would be in the region of £175,000 annual cost in fees to the partnership authority and around £85,000 annual management costs. This totals £260,000 annually. These figures are high level estimates that have been based on DPE schemes that have been implemented in other local authorities.”
Councillors around the chamber gave cautious welcome to the 165 page report but there was anxiety at the broad brush proposals and each party took the chance to air specific worries over about specific communities.
Mr Brown stressed on several occasions that the delivered strategy was at this stage “high level” and further discussions needed to be had within council, with council roads staff and within communities before details could be finalised and the new strategy agreed.
More than 3,000 people responded to an online survey and more than 100 to face to face questions. There have also been group consultations with bodies such as Transport Scotland and public transport providers.
The introduction of DPE would give council the powers to control on and off street parking across the county as well as authority over traffic control orders and the power to ticket offenders for parking in disabled bays without blue badges. The preferred business model would be to partner with an existing authority which manages a DPE scheme to keep costs down.
The move to DPE is also slowed because it includes a complicated legal process through the Scottish Government as well as complex work which needs to be undertaken by roads department staff.
Mr Brown told the meeting: “When you drill down into the strategy the problems that people are reporting back, and the issues that are experienced the majority of people have got a problem with enforcement, they have got a problem with footway parking and parking on double yellow lines, and at school gates. These things are coming up in all communities. The problems are the same across towns and villages.”
Chairing the meeting Linlithgow’s Labour councillor Tom Conn: “This report is a high level document. I appreciate there’s questions about the papers but the process that hopefully we are going to agree on will be able to answer questions and that process will have to be agreed by the Executive .
“But at the moment we are literally miles away from that decision being made but we need to go through a process that will hopefully inform responses to what communities' concerns are and actually move forward in the future, particularly given the lack of enforcement by Police Scotland. DPE is an alternative but at the moment we have to go through a lot of questions that members have asked.”
Conservative Alison Adamson said: “I do hugely welcome this report. We all have problems in our wards, local knowledge is one of key ingredients when it comes to looking for solutions the need for enforcement is beyond doubt. We know there are issues of safety around schools, we know that people who are trying to access parking bays because they are blue badge holders the need for enforcement has come about because there are a lot of very selfish people who will park anywhere.”
Diane Calder for the SNP said: “ It does seem to have taken some time to get to this stage but I would like to see this introduced as we have problems across West Lothian It needs to be introduced in a balanced way that doesn’t affect people getting to work benign at work or reprimanded for trying to do these things or do things like shop local. I would like to see this introduced as soon as possible.”
For Labour, depute council leader Kirsteen Sullivan said: “ There’s been a lot of effort put into this. I think we are all aware of multiple issues with parking across the county, not least pavement parking which is really inconsiderate in particular to pedestrians who have disabilities or those who have young children trying to make their way along the footpath.”
The report concluded: “The West Lothian Parking Strategy document is a comprehensive document which has gathered information to inform future policy and strategies for parking in West Lothian. Financial implications and funding sources will also require to be explored to ensure a detailed business case and informed decisions can be made to progress the interventions contained within this report.”
The PDSP agreed to note the report which will now go the Executive.
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