Ruddington Parish Council (RPC) often receives complaints about the parking situation on the stretch of Wilford Road near Sainsbury’s.
The problem exists for two reasons: (a) some drivers ignore the ‘no waiting’ restrictions, and (b) the County Council takes the view that removing the restrictions and putting in double yellow lines would result in faster traffic and more accidents. Furthermore, the shops on Wilford Road want these parking slots to be available for their customers.
Is this then a problem that can’t be solved? RPC believes that improvements can be made through better information and better enforcement. So you’ll soon be seeing Ruddington volunteers, accompanied by a PCSO, handing out warning letters to illegally-parked drivers at peak morning and evening times. In the short term, there’ll also be an increase in traffic warden activity in this area. You have been warned!
As with all things, we’ll review progress and consider what, if any, the next steps should be. We’re expecting to see an improvement in the short term, which means fewer people deliberately parking illegally whilst additional measures are in place. However, we also expect that the situation will revert to normal once the flow of parking tickets stops.
So to tackle the problem in the longer term, RPC is looking at investing in additional enforcement officer time (‘traffic warden patrols’ in old fashioned language) on a more permanent basis. The cost of this extra time will be borne from your Council Tax payments by the way, but the alternative appears to be to do nothing – which is simply not acceptable.
This is a problem without an easy solution. However, please let me know if you have any better ideas. If they’re within the law – we can’t put naughty drivers in the village stocks for example! – and within the powers of RPC, we’ll gladly consider them.
Councillor Nick Tegerdine