102 tickets issued in illegal car parking blitz

At the end of a morning, 102 parking tickets had been issued and four offending vehicles had been towed away by recovery lorry.

Sixteen police officers were involved in Wednesday's crack-down plus traffic wardens from Battle and Rye.

The operation, the second of its kind, was the result of discussions between the police and Rother over problem parking in the town.

Among vehicles targeted was a Ford Escort which had, allegedly, been left overnight over the driveway to a property in Albany Road so blocking-in two cars parked on the drive. Also towed away were vehicles parked illegally in London Road, Western Road and Town Hall Square.

Rother leader Cllr Graham Gubby, who brokered the agreement to crack down on illegal parking in the town with Inspector Max Mosley, toured the town centre with officers during Wednesday morning's operation.

Cllr Gubby said later: "This is not a numbers game. This is a genuine attempt by Rother council to work with our police to free-up parking in Bexhill which has been abused for too long.

"As a local authority, we recognise that the police are very short of staff and we are grateful that this sort of cooperation will hopefully help people park - which in turn will help the shopkeepers to improve their business.

"Ninety three tickets means 93 parking spaces freed for others to use."

Inspector Mosley said on Wednesday afternoon: "I have two people who had previously written to me to complain about the parking situation leave messages on my answerphone already thanking us for allocating police resources to the parking problem.

Of the 102 tickets issued he said: "At 30 a time that is 3,060 that has gone to the Exchequer which, if we had decriminalised parking here gone to the local authority to deal with parking quality of life issues.

"That is in addition to four tow-aways at 105 a time plus the 30 ticket- that's a lot of money."