White lines are meant to ensure people have access. Elsie Road has been a long standing issue with regards to white line enforcement. REsidents there felt the Police were being a bit random in their responses. So this is what I’ve found out…

If a vehicle is stuck on the driveway and is blocked in then the Police can have it removed. If a driveway is blocked and a person is stopped from driving onto their driveway, then they can’t.

The Police local patrol team (LPT) or if the local Safer Neighbourhood Team is in the area, the Police always aim to turn-out and try and resolve white line issues, but if the Police are otherwise engaged  calls will be passed to despatch for another LPT or the response team to attend. This is categorised as ‘E’ graded call (a lower priority response, as it does not require the immediate attendance of a police officer) this can entail a long wait as so many other things take priority. Very often the police will eventually attend and find that the problem has remedied itself and the vehicle has moved.

Last year some of the unhelpful calls for help included:

– one resident called the police to attend when his driveway was ‘blocked’ by six inches but could drive in or out.

– another called when he had a skip on his drive and argued that police should remove the car as the skip needed emptying, we got the car moved – but the skip was there (full) for another two weeks.

– another request because a resident could only turn left out of his driveway but could exit their drive.

– one resident parked his car across the white line of his driveway to make sure nobody else did

Apparently the vast majority of vehicles are moved before the police arrive, even when they are close by and get there within a few minutes. Of the remainder, many apparently have occupants within them and move upon request, some are nearby residents and we can trace the through the PNC and of the very few that remain we do aim to remove them or ticket them if we suspect they are nearby and will shortly return. Unfortunately, when we are on foot we do not always carry parking tickets – as we give out so few of them and there is a staggering amount of tickets, booklets and forms available to us – I fear my officer’s legs would snap if they carried them all (if they carried just one of each, they would require a small rucksack to carry them in).