Locals threatened with £1,000 fines for parking on | Tech News

A Labour-run council has threatened locals with hefty £1,000 fines for parking their autos on their driveway. According to locals, Southampton City Council has despatched letters to residents who drive over non-dropped kerbs to entry their property. 

The Telegraph experiences that one letter posted to a resident accused the proprietor of having access to their property “unlawfully” by “crossing the kerbed footway”. The letter instructed this might result in “damage of the public highway” with street customers as an alternative urged to use for council permission to put in a dropped kerb. However,  this comes at a hefty price with owners more likely to be slapped with round a £600 invoice to secure the rights to a dropped kerb adopted by £165 in labor charges. 

Councillor Christie Lambert, Cabinet Member for Transport at Southampton City Council, confused that it was “important” that vehicle crossings are constructed correctly to restrict injury to the footpath.

In a assertion to the Express, he mentioned: “Footways are not generally constructed to hold the weight of a vehicle, and often cover services and utilities which can be damaged. This is why it is important vehicle crossings are constructed correctly and with permission from the Highway Authority. Under the Highways Act 1980, the Highway Authority can reclaim costs for damages caused to the highway.  

“This isn’t a new course of for Southampton and thru the Highways Service Partnership, during their routine inspections, Highway Inspectors will serve discover to a property which the Inspector has noticed a vehicle parked the place it should have pushed over the footway illegally to get there.”

The Highways Act 1980, states that officers have the ability to inform anybody illegally driving over a footpath to entry a building. 

But Southampton City Council has not but issued any fines for street customers for breaking the principles. One Conservative councillor described the transfer as “unnecessarily heavy-handed”.

However, Mr Lambert added: “We follow a process of three separate notices being served, and it is the third and final notice which warns that the Highway Authority can recover costs for repairing damage.

“Our purpose is to encourage compliance, and we work with residents to take them by way of the dropped kerb utility course of.

“Every Highway Authority in England has similar processes to deter the use of illegal vehicle crossovers, as it can cost the authority tens of thousands of pounds to repair a footway if the structure has been weakened and underground utilities damaged by vehicles passing over it where they shouldn’t.”