Council drawing up plans to tackle “concerning” rise in drivers parking on grass verges

Sandwell Council will be looking at ways to stop cars from using the borough’s grass verges as parking spaces as it tries to get to grips with “unsafe and damaging” behaviour.

With more and more cars clogging up Sandwell’s often old and cramped residential streets, the council has limited powers to punish those drivers parking on verges and measures such as bollards and fences prove to be costly in the face of ever-stretched budgets.

Sandwell Council said drawing up the policy would allow it to be “rigorous and consistent” over the persistent problem.

The council’s economy, skills, transport and environment scrutiny board meets to discuss the potential policy on October 9.

Parking on grass verges creates many problems including delaying and blocking emergency services, obstructing buses and taxis, forcing wheelchair users and those with buggies and prams onto the road, hindering the blind and partially sighted as well as posing a risk for cyclists and other drivers.

The council said it had been waiting for a law change banning cars from parking on verges, but is now following the lead of other local authorities in drawing up its own policies with national legislation failing to materialise.

The council said most of Sandwell’s roads were designed ‘between 80 and 180 years ago’ – leaving them cramped and unfit for the number of cars now on the road.

The cold and rain of winter weather only made matters worse as “even small vehicles” churned up saturated ground leaving them “unsightly.”

Local authorities can fine drivers who park on verges where roads have double yellow lines but has few other powers.

It is not currently an offence to park on a verge unless it is dangerous, causes an obstruction, or the council can prove it is damaging the road and verge, where it would then be a matter for police.

The council has powers to enforce against vehicles parked on grass verges but only if it forms part of the adopted highway and an “appropriate” traffic regulation order (TRO), which also covers the grass verge, is in place.

“The only enforcement action we could take as a local authority relates to damage to the verge, and in order to do this we would need to prove beyond reasonable doubt the offence for each vehicle present,” the council scrutiny report for October 9 states.

“This is very difficult to do for a single occurrence, even more so if there was existing damage already present.”

There had been “limited efforts” to use bollards in some problematic areas, the council said, which were “costly” and disrupted grass cutting and money would be wasted on repairs that are “destroyed almost immediately.”

The council says it has options but most would be ruled out as ‘expensive and ineffective’ according to the scrutiny report. Bollards would be “costly” and disrupt grass cutting, the council said.

Laying surfaces such as ‘grasscrete’ or ‘geotextile’, which allows parking but preserves some of the grass, would be “unaffordable withing the current budget” according to the report.

As would tarmacing or installing permeable surfacing to troublesome grass areas – which the same report says would have “financial implications that go beyond the capacity of existing budgets.”

Plans were last drawn up in 2017 when the council said it was anticipating a change in the law that banned parking on grass verges except for in certain specified locations.

The legislation is still yet to change.

“Due to limited road width and increasing car ownership there are many locations in Sandwell where we have persistent problems with motorists parking and driving across grass verges,” the report said.

“Repairs to damaged grass verges where the underlying problem of vehicles continuously impacting the locations are challenging, because any repairs are destroyed almost immediately, wasting money and resources.”

Leeds City Council, which would serve as inspiration for policies in Sandwell, drew up its own strategy for protecting grass verges, used following complaints about parking or if the service is called upon.

It assesses whether the road is residential or not, wide enough and busy or quiet and what space was currently available to decide whether parking should be deterred or accommodated.

The council could then deter parking through measures such as installing new signs, fences, and bollards or introducing new parking restrictions.

If the problems could be solved by allowing parking, the areas could be resurfaced or strengthened or parking bays could be installed.

While the policy contains a raft of measures, Leeds City Council, no doubt in a similar position to Sandwell Council, admitted much of it would be expensive and difficult to fund using already “severely strained” budgets barely covering maintenance work let alone new projects.

“The cost of verge works will vary from a few hundred pounds for simple reinstatement repair to hundreds of thousands of pounds for building a parking bay scheme for a whole street,” the Yorkshire local authority admitted.