Petition - Parking restrictions at Blackbrook Park Avenue Fareham

We deal with many parking related complaints and we are aware that these issues can be a cause of great frustration for residents.  However, our limited resources are now prioritised to maintain the safe condition of the highway and reduce the number of people killed and injured in traffic collisions.  Requests for parking restrictions are prioritised in the same way as all other traffic controls, with higher priority given to casualty reduction.  Parking issues rarely give rise to injury accidents and so they generally will be a much lower priority than other traffic management matters.  Unfortunately, the demand for traffic and safety measures countywide far exceeds our available resources, but reducing the numbers of people injured on our roads is our priority and we focus our resources where they will achieve the greatest road safety benefit.

Furthermore, there is often an expectation that providing yellow lines or other parking restrictions would be a quick or low cost measure, but this is not the case.  The provision of any formal parking restrictions requires implementation of a legally enforceable Traffic Regulation Order (TRO), which is a resource intensive and relatively costly process, including formal consultations and advertisements.

The implementation of a TRO is also subject to any objections received during the statutory consultation and advertising period and all road users, not just local residents, are eligible to comment.  Parking restrictions can be contentious locally and there will often be comments and objections raised that may then result in the proposed measures being altered, or in some cases dropped altogether if there is no consensus of opinion.  In residential areas where parking space is at a premium, we are likely to receive objections to any measures that reduce or restrict parking space and it would not be appropriate to consider restrictions that would merely displace the problems elsewhere nearby.

For these reasons we cannot consider any parking related TRO’s for locations that do not have casualty history or proven recurring safety issues.  I can confirm that Blackbrook Park Avenue has no recurring history of reported injury accidents, and no such incidents have been reported throughout the section of road encompassing both junctions referred to in your petition in the past ten years.

I appreciate this will not be the response you were hoping for, but I hope this clarifies the position.

Yours sincerely

Councillor Rob Humby
Executive Member for Environment and Transport