Parking: council to take tougher stance in Bognor

The swap is being considered by councillors as part of a tougher approach to parking enforcement.

Members of Arun District Council's decision-making cabinet agreed in principle on Monday to take on the role of ensuring parking rules are obeyed by motorists.

A detailed report about how the new role could be carried out will be presented by the council's head of environmental amenities and community safety, Kevin Basford, to the cabinet in June.

If the process is agreed by councillors, the first parking attendants employed by Arun should take to the streets from the end of June next year.

Council deputy leader Roger Elkins said: "Of course, we should be taking on this role. A clean and safe district is one of our priorities and part of that is taking responsibility for this issue.

"If we have residents who are being affected by cars parked in inappropriate places, we need to take on that responsibility.

"We might be blamed if we are tough on enforcement, but those residents will expect us to make their environment safer."

Parking rules around central Bognor are currently enforced by five traffic wardens, based at the town's police station, who hand out some 4,800 tickets a year.

They patrol around the controlled parking zone, which sees residents having to pay to park on roads, and limits the time other motorists can stay in the same spot.

The wardens, however, do not venture outside the zone. Any parking enforcement there has been carried out in recent years by police community support officers in response to public pressure. Aldwick Road around the Tesco Express branch has seen such action.

But Bognor town centre is unique in the Arun district in having any traffic wardens. This leads to a general free-for-all along the kerbs elsewhere.

While Bognor's parking zone is enforced by traffic wardens, collection of the parking ticket revenue is carried out by Arun on behalf of the county council.

Arun runs its off-street car parks separately. Mr Basford said combining on and off-street parking would provide an integrated service and effective enforcement.

It would aim to be self-financing after two years of start-up costs. Detailed financial figures will not be known until his report in June.

Cllr Paul Dendle said he supported the idea provided it was modelled on the council parking operations in Mid-Sussex, Horsham and Adur.

"This gives us the power to deal with illegally-parked cars and it is going to be self-financing through the extra enforcement that will take place," he stated.

He described the current parking in Arundel as anarchy with the one-hour parking restriction completely ignored.

But Cllr Ricky Bower said Arun would find itself being blamed by residents who would fall foul of the stricter parking rules.

Cllr Paul Wotherspoon stated: "Do we need to be taking things on that we don't have to take on?"

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