Written evidence submitted by Guide Dogs (PPA0350)

About Guide Dogs

Guide Dogs provides services to support the independence of people with sight loss in the UK. Alongside our services, we campaign to remove physical and legal barriers so that people with sight loss can get around on their own terms. Current estimates suggest there are two million people with sight loss in the UK, of which around 360,000 are registered as blind or partially sighted.[1]

Summary

• Pavement parking has a significant negative impact on people with sight loss and other pedestrians, putting people in danger from traffic, causing injuries and forcing people to change their routes, or preventing people from going out unaccompanied.
• Councils find tackling pavement parking using their existing powers to make Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) impractical and prohibitively costly.
• Guide Dogs supports reform to parking enforcement to help councils keep vehicles off the pavement.
• We believe that new legislation limiting pavement parking to areas decided by local authorities is the best way to change driver behaviour.
• This approach has worked successfully in London since 1974, and will shortly be implemented in Scotland.
• We also support other changes to streamline the TRO process and make it easier for councils to enforce against pavement parking, but are concerned that on their own these would be insufficient to the scale of the problem.
• Although the scope of this inquiry is limited to England, we would urge the Committee to clarify the issue of the devolution of powers over pavement parking in Wales, which remains unclear.

The impact of pavement parking
Pavement parking puts pedestrians in danger, including disabled
people, older people, and parents with pushchairs. People with sight loss are particularly at risk as they may have no alternative but to walk in the road with traffic which they cannot see. Streets with pavement parked cars are dangerous and stressful to navigate.

In Spring 2019, Guide Dogs conducted a survey on the impact of pavement parking, with 1,920 respondents, including 481 people with vision impairments and 120 wheelchair users.[2] 95% of respondents with vision impairment said that vehicles parked on pavements had caused a problem for them in the past year. This figure was similarly high across other disabled respondents: 92% of people with hearing impairments, 98% of wheelchair users and 89% of people with other disabilities.

Pavement parking was a recurring problem for the majority of survey participants: 45% of people with vision impairments said they encountered pavement parked vehicles that made it difficult to walk along a pavement every day, with a further 35% reporting encountering pavement parking on a weekly basis.

As well as the dangers of oncoming traffic, pavement parking can cause injuries when people with sight loss collide with the vehicle or hit a wing mirror. Our survey found that one in five participants with sight loss had been injured as a result of vehicles parked on the pavement over the past year.

The impact of pavement parking is not limited to the immediate danger to pedestrians. A significant proportion of disabled pedestrians are forced to change their routine to avoid the danger of pavement parking. This can result intaking longer routes, limiting unaccompanied travel, or avoiding leaving the house altogether. The detrimental consequences for health and wellbeing due to the resulting loss of independence or increased isolation can be just as significant. Our survey found that 52% of respondents with vision impairments had changed their routes to avoid pavement parked vehicles, and 32% said that they were less willing to go out on their own as a result of pavement parking. The figures were even higher for wheelchair users: 77% said they had changed their route and 48% were less willing to go out alone.

Besides causing an obstruction, cars parked on pavements damage the surface, creating trip hazards for pedestrians. Pavements are not designed to take the weight of vehicles, forcing councils to divert significant resources for repairs. As an indicative figure, the Highways Manager at Brighton & Hove City Council has estimated that 10–20% of the footway repair budget of £500,000 is spent repairing pavements damaged as a result of pavement parking each year.[3] This figure does not take into account the cost of legal action by pedestrians against local authorities when they sustain an injury due to damaged pavements.

Despite the impact on pedestrians, pavement parking is common, normalised behaviour for drivers. A 2018 YouGov poll for Guide Dogs showed that 65% of drivers admitted to parking on the pavement.[4] A similar YouGov survey in 2017 showed that of the drivers who admit to pavement parking, more than half (55%) said that they had considered the impact on blind and partially sighted people, but parked on the pavement regardless.[5]

Existing parking regulation

The current laws around pavement parking are confusing and inconsistent. Although driving on the pavement is an offence, outside of London, parking on the pavement is not a specific offence except where there is a Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) imposing a specific restriction.

Some restrictions indicated by road markings cover both the footway (pavement or verge) and the carriageway, while others only cover the carriageway. For example, single or double yellow or red lines also cover the footway, so pavement parking is prohibited next to these markings. On the other hand, bus stops, yellow zig-zags outside schools, or white zig-zags near pedestrian crossings only restrict parking on the carriageway, so it appears that pavement parking is permitted next to these markings. This inconsistency in regulation means that pavement parking is not always prohibited even in situations where it would pose a clear risk to pedestrians.

Councils struggle to tackle pavement parking using their existing powers to make TROs. Once a TRO is in place, enforcement is relatively simple, but prohibiting pavement parking even in a small area using a TRO is a lengthy and expensive process. These orders have extensive requirements for consultation, advertising and signage. Signs indicating pavement parking restrictions must be repeated every 30 metres, adding to street clutter and maintenance costs. According to PATROL (Parking and Traffic Regulation Outside London), making a TRO in a small area can take between 3 and 12 months, with a cost of up to £5,000, with additional ongoing costs for signage and maintenance.[6]

As these costs scale with the size of the TRO, restricting pavement parking over larger areas using TROs becomes prohibitively expensive. The result is that councils are simply not able to meet their policy objectives using the current system. Although we know that a number of councils, such as Slough, would like to put an area-wide restriction in place, we are not aware of any examples where this has been successfully achieved using TROs beyond a limited area.

Tackling unsafe pavement parking

Guide Dogs supports reform to parking enforcement to help councils tackle unsafe pavement parking and safeguard pedestrians. We believe that change should aim for a consistent approach with simple rules, sending a clear message to drivers that pavement parking should be the exception, not the norm. Pedestrians should be able to rely on clear and safe walking routes.

We believe that new legislation to limit pavement parking to areas decided by the local authority is the best way to achieve this, reversing the assumption in current regulation in favour of unsafe parking. This would have the biggest impact on driver behaviour, making it clear that pedestrian safety takes priority over driver convenience. Changing driver behaviour is vital since enforcement is never going to be possible 24 hours a day.

In London, this system has operated successfully since 1974. There is a general prohibition on pavement parking, but councils wishing to permit pavement parking in areas where it is judged necessary can exempt specific streets by simple council resolution. This flexible approach avoids the need for complex and costly TROs and signage requirements and allows councils to respond to local circumstances. Provisions are also made for emergency vehicles, or loading and unloading where no reasonable alternative exists.

A similar regime will shortly be introduced in Scotland, restricting pavement parking and double parking to areas exempted by the local authority. The Transport (Scotland) Bill, which has cross-party support, is currently at Stage 2 in the Scottish Parliament and looks likely to become law this year.[7]

The Scottish experience will provide valuable lessons on issues arising during the transition to a new pavement parking regime. The Scottish Government has already considered many of the practical implications during preparatory work with local authorities, including assessing the costs of transition and planning a phased introduction of the restrictions by area based on council readiness.

69% of the public support a new pavement parking law,[8] along with 78% of local authority councillors.[9] The campaign is supported by 36 organisations including the Local Government Association, British Parking Association, and the charity Living Streets.

“Local authorities need this power to respond to concerns raised by their communities…pavement parking and damaged pavements are one of the biggest complaints from pedestrians.” – Cllr Martin Tett, Chair of the Local Government Association Environment, Economy, Housing & Transport Board [10]

Reforming TROs

We also support proposals to streamline the TRO process to make it easier for councils to introduce restrictions on pavement parking. We welcome the recent consultation on the future of TROs and the possibilities created by opening up TRO data.

One specific area where the costs of TROs could be reduced is the requirement to advertise them in local newspapers. The cost of buying advertising adds significantly to the cost of making TROs. As online and other forms of media become increasingly important, a one size fits all approach requiring notices in newspapers is clearly no longer the most appropriate way of publicising TROs.

In 2012, the Department for Transport consulted on proposals to reform TROs, including a proposal to remove the requirement to advertise in newspapers. This would have produced an estimated annual cost saving to local authorities of £17m, while improving public awareness of TROs as councils shift to more effective channels of communication. However, these proposals were not taken forward following opposition from local newspapers.[11]

Subsidising local media may be a valuable policy objective in itself, but it is wrong to achieve this by saddling local authorities with additional costs to carry out basic traffic regulation functions. As DfT’s own impact assessment pointed out, “where the present arrangements can no longer be justified, local newspapers cannot continue to expect to receive what is in effect, public sector subsidy through the continued placing of these adverts.”[12] It is unacceptable to put the financial health of local media before the safety of pedestrians affected by pavement parking. We recommend that advertising requirements should be reviewed as part of any revision to the TRO process.

Although rationalising the TRO process is clearly welcome, we believe that wider reform is necessary to empower councils to tackle inconsiderate pavement parking. However streamlined the process of making a TRO might be, there will always be requirements for consultation and advertising to allow stakeholders to register their views. Looking at the process alone also ignores signage, a major driver of cost. Without changes that remove the need for large quantities of additional signage, dealing with pavement parking using TROs will remain impractical.

Controlled Parking Zones

For this reason, some local authorities have suggested prohibiting pavement parking in Controlled Parking Zones (CPZs) as part of a range of measures to tackle the problem. This would make restricting pavement parking easier in areas where there are already parking restrictions by reducing the requirement for new signage.

However, the impact of this measure would be limited and uneven. CPZs are relatively common in large urban areas but their use is patchier in towns and rarer still in rural areas. Areas where there is no general restriction on parking would be unaffected. Even within a CPZ, the impact would be limited. In a CPZ, all areas outside of marked parking bays are covered by double or single yellow lines, which already prohibit pavement parking. Restricting pavement parking within a CPZ would therefore only affect cars parked on the pavement within marked parking bays.

Changing the standard conditions of CPZs to include restrictions on pavement parking would require an amendment to the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 (TSRGD) to change the meaning of the standard signage. As CPZs are created by TROs, it could also involve amendments to each individual CPZ TRO, which as discussed would involve considerable cost.

Obstruction

In the same vein, other local authorities have called for the decriminalisation of the offence of obstruction[13] to help them tackle dangerous pavement parking. This would mean the offence could be enforced by civil enforcement officers (CEOs) rather than police officers. This would end the confusion over responsibility for pavement parking between council and police force and allow councils to enforce against the worst examples of pavement parking without the need for TROs. However, we see several hurdles which would need to be overcome for CEOs to be able to enforce this effectively.

Obstruction is more legally complex than existing road traffic offences that are subject to civil parking enforcement, such as parking on double yellow lines. First, an unlawful obstruction is only enforceable if the obstruction is actual and not merely perceived. Typically, this means that someone must complain that they are being obstructed before the police can take action. Without additional changes, this could make it difficult for councils to proactively enforce against obstruction. This could put the onus on individual pedestrians to complain about obstructions, rather than local authorities taking responsibility for keeping pavements clear.

Secondly, a police officer must exercise considerable discretion in determining whether a vehicle is obstructing the highway, depending on the individual circumstances of the case. Case law including Nagy v Weston (1965)[14] sets out the test for obstruction as whether the particular use of a highway by a vehicle is unreasonable, having regard to all the circumstances including its duration, position and purpose. Even in cases where a vehicle blocks the pavement so that a guide dog owner, wheelchair user or parent with a pushchair has to use the road to get past, police must still take account of all these circumstances. CEOs might be able to enforce against the most obvious cases of obstruction, but the complexity of the requirements for obstruction could make successful challenges to parking fines more likely.

Wales

Although the scope of this inquiry is limited to England, we would urge the Committee to clarify the issue of the devolution of powers over pavement parking in Wales, which remains unclear. According to the UK Government, although the Welsh Government cannot legislate to make pavement parking a road traffic offence (i.e. a criminal offence such as dangerous driving), they could legislate to make it a traffic contravention subject to civil enforcement.[15] The Welsh Government’s position is that Welsh Ministers only have the power to designate certain road traffic offences as civil contraventions,[16] while legislative competence in respect of on-street parking control in Wales is reserved to the UK Government.[17]

This mirrors an earlier situation in Scotland, where despite a similar model of devolution and reservations, legislation to restrict pavement parking was ruled out of the competence of the Scottish Parliament. This situation was only resolved with an amendment to the Scotland Act 2016 to clarify that powers were devolved.[18]

This lack of clarity about the devolution of powers is preventing discussion of action on pavement parking in Wales. We call on the UK and Welsh Governments to work together to clarify the status of powers over pavement parking in Wales. If necessary, the UK Government should commit to amending the Wales Act 2017 to clearly devolve these powers.

May 2019