Call for more parking enforcement in Sunderland as drivers cause a headache in Roker

Fed-up residents say drivers are causing them headaches by parking on double-yellow lines - with little danger of them getting fined due to a lack of parking enforcement officers.

One St George's Terrace resident said he presented Sunderland City Council with a petition asking for a residents’ parking scheme in May 2023, but waited until March 2024 for an answer. It was turned down.

But he says what parking restrictions are ignored because of a lack of enforcement, suggesting more parking officers are needed.

While older generations will remember traffic wardens, which were police employees, enforcing parking restrictions became a civil matter in the 1990s and 2000s, with local councils employing ‘civil enforcement officers (CEOs)’ under job titles such as ‘parking attendant’.

A Freedom of Information request by the man in St George’s Terrace reveals that in the first three months of 2024, no CEOs worked in the whole of the city on eight days, with just one working on 19 days. The average was 2.5 CEOs per day.

However, in January 2024 council parking officers still issued 1,576 tickets; an average of 50 per day.

The resident told the Echo: "We've been asking the council for nearly a decade to put a residents' parking scheme in place and they've never done anything about it. They keep putting us off and putting us off.

"I put a petition in and lots of the residents signed it in May last year. I only just got a response in March and the council just said 'no'.

"Twinned with that is the problem of people parking on the double yellow lines. It's every weekend and it's not just my street.

"The council told me to ring Parking Services. We ring and we're told there's only one person on duty that day, who doesn't drive and he's in the city centre so can't get out.

"The other week we were told there was no one working and I think that's ridiculous. How can you not have anyone working on parking enforcement in the entire city?

"Weekends are the worst. People just park on double yellows and go surfing, or walking dogs.

“There's literally never any parking attendants there and people know it. Surely they're not meeting their statutory obligations."

Sunderland City Council responded: "Community Parking Management Schemes (CPMS) generally have two active hours (10-11am and 2-3pm) and are designed to deal with long-stay commuter parking around metro stations, hospitals, stadiums etc, but they don’t prevent short term parking.

"However, we keep a record of requests for CPMSs for consideration in future programmes.

"Officers from Parking Services carry out patrols across the entire city and where vehicles are noted to be parked on the double yellow lines, they are asked to move.

"Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) are issued if a vehicle is not removed after the observation period has been carried out.

"This approach to enforcement is consistent across the city to help maintain road safety and keep traffic moving across our busy network.

"When local concerns are raised we will afford those areas priority enforcement to help remove any indiscriminate parking."

There are similar ongoing issues in other areas of Sunderland, including Chester Road and the section of Durham Road near Burn Park.