A day with the parking wardens

One of the biggest grumbles that we hear from local residents is regarding Westminster's parking policies. Receiving a ticket can be an intensely frustrating experience and sometimes the stories we listen to do make you question your sanity. So, I decided to spend a morning with some of our parking attendants to see how it is in on the frontline.

I picked a good morning for it - not too cold for January. I met many of the parking attendants on the 'beat' I was assigned in Bayswater and all of them were polite, hard-working and reasonable. And, for the record, none of them were hunting in packs.

Adi, the supervisor, showed me around and talked about the challenges of keeping traffic flowing in Westminster. We might not all agree with all of the rules around parking but the intention is correct - to allow all drivers to get around the City as quickly as possible and to make sure that residents and visitors can access parking spaces in an area of very high demand.

Just in case you were interested, in the entire time I was out, we only issued one parking ticket. And we let off a good number of people who knew that they were being naughty, but agreed to move when they were asked. That said, we did rather scare a perfectly innocent (and legally parked) white van man on Leinster Terrace, when Adi ran through how a parking ticket was issued for me. The man looked mortified when he thought we were about to stick a ticket on his windscreen!

Lee

PS We know that sometimes parking attendants get it wrong when issuing tickets. And we'd be delighted to help if you shouldn't have received a ticket. Please get in touch!