Camera cars could clamp down on dangerous parking in Bristol
Councillors are concerned bad parking is putting "children at risk"
Cars with cameras on top of them could patrol Bristol streets near schools to clamp down on parents parking dangerously.
Some parents ignore parking restrictions outside schools “putting children at risk”, according to one councillor who has called for better enforcement.
Bristol City Council is responsible for enforcing rules on parking, but struggles with enforcement outside schools during drop-off and pick-up times. The high number of schools that need to be patrolled, and the short amount of time that’s affected, both make enforcement challenging.
One solution could be camera cars, used in other council areas successfully, to be rolled out at a wider level in Bristol. Questions were raised about school safety during a meeting of the member forum on Tuesday, October 8.
Labour Councillor Katja Hornchen said: “There’s an issue with school parking, which I’m sure is not only in Brislington East. I live on the border with South Gloucestershire and I can assure you, as a teacher in South Gloucestershire, they camera cars work very efficiently because people are frightened of them.”
The council also struggles to hire enough civil enforcement officers, with vacancies in the team left empty for years. Camera cars however would allow for officers to enforce parking rules outside several schools much more quickly.
Green Cllr Ed Plowden said: “School enforcement may better lend itself to camera enforcement, and this is something that officers have on their roadmap. Although there would be an initial capital cost for the purchase and the set up of the cameras, they could be more effective to operate in the long term.
“It’s on the roadmap. That’s not really a yes or no, but it’s certainly something that’s in consideration.”
Another issue is the partial ban on council using camera cars more generally to enforce parking rules, put in place by the Coalition government. Eric Pickles, former communities secretary, announced the ban a decade ago “in a victory for drivers and shoppers”.
This means tickets have to be fixed to windscreens by parking wardens, rather than just using the cars to catch drivers breaking the rules and then sending a parking ticket in the post. Exceptions were made for critical routes, such as schools, bus lanes and bus stops.
Cllr Plowden added: “Back in 2014, Eric Pickles stopped any council enforcing parking with the use of cameras. Since then there’s a number of roads in Bristol that have really ground to a halt, making it extremely difficult for bus operators to operate.
“There’s a whole load of places where we see that you could have an enforcement officer go right along the street, and when they came back again it would still be clogged up with poor parking. That would be a great quick-win for the new incoming government to reverse that.
“It was something that Eric Pickles did on a whim. That would enable us to do a lot more parking enforcement across the city and support more sustainable travel."