There are quite a number of pieces of legislation that we can use. At the moment, we use traffic regulation orders. One of the statements that I think I heard you making in the earlier session was that local authorities do not use traffic regulation orders to prohibit footway parking. South Lanarkshire Council has used them to prohibit footway parking on three occasions when the matter was brought to our attention and other means of stopping footway parking were not feasible.
Normally, the first thing that we look at is putting down standard waiting restrictions, which relate to the road and the footway. However, in some residential areas that is not necessarily appropriate. We then look at putting bollards down, but that can cause problems if the footway would be made too narrow by doing that. We go through those steps, and, as I said, on a number of occasions we have actually used a traffic regulation order to prohibit footway parking. Existing regulations and powers are there for local authorities to do that, if they wish.
Section 129(2) of the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 states:
“A person who, without lawful authority or reasonable excuse, places or deposits anything in a road”—
the road includes the footway, so that would include somebody who places a car on the footway—
“so as to obstruct the passage of, or to endanger, road users commits an offence”.
My reading of that is that it is not necessary to see a vehicle being driven on to the footway or to know who did so; it is just the depositing of it there that causes the problem.
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