Pavement parking Council fears ban could be legally 'too costly'

ROLLING out a ban on pavement parking in Bristol would carry "significant risk" as the Government might change the law.

- Alex SEABROOK

A leading Green councillor said that the current law means that banning drivers from parking on the pavement would be "cumbersome, laborious and costly.

Parts of Bristol lack parking spaces meaning drivers sometimes leave cars on the pavement, blocking pedestrians. The problem particularly affects parents with pushchairs and disabled people using wheelchairs, who risk getting hit by a car when having to move into the road.

Before the Greens largely took control of Bristol City Council, in local elections just over a year ago, they launched a petition calling for a ban on pavement parking - 1,500 people signed the petition, which pointed at a ban recently rolled out in the city centre of Sheffield as an example.

Now, however, a ban in Bristol appears unlikely any time soon. The former Conservative government consulted the public in 2020 about changing the law to make rolling out a ban easier for councils to do so. But a summary of responses was never published, nor the next steps on the law change.