Time to stop these nuisance parkers in their tracks

He likened it to a daily game of dodgems as inconsiderate parents and guardians completely disregard the parking restrictions in place and dump their cars at the closest possible spot to the school gates in question.

I can only sympathise with his plight.

And I can also only assume that he does not get much chance to leave the office during the day and look at the ridiculous parking in parts of Nelson.

You only have to go about 300 yards from the town police station to find illegal parking all day and all night.

Go anywhere near the former Clayton Arms and you will find, on both sides of the road, cars parked willy-nilly no matter what parking restrictions are in place.

The problem as I see it as that I never see a traffic warden in Nelson town centre, other than the ones who seem to be patrolling the pay-and-display car parks which actually free up the town centre streets rather than clog them up.

I also noticed on a local Facebook page that Edward Lee, judging from his profile picture this is your columnist, pointing out that he had recently visited the renowned Slater’s Ice Cream Bar in the town centre and had been staggered by the number of people who had parked on double yellow lines outside the shop rather than use the virtually empty, free, pay-and-display car park right next to it.

A daily occurence as far as I can see.

I think there are two easy solutions to these parking maniacs.

In the first instance I would get a police officer to run all the registrations through the DVLA data-base and see how many of them are actually taxed.

My guess is not many. Then the law demands that each and every one of the untaxed vehicles is towed away and crushed. A line of cubic metal along the side of the pavement might deter a few other people.

Then we could actually start by prosecuting the people who park illegally. Prosecute them properly. Fine them, enforce the fines, chase them through the courts and make them pay.

I don’t know much about the situation in Earby, Barnoldswick and Colne although a quick trawl through social media would seem to suggest that it is similar.

But I do know that in Nelson and Brierfield this illegal parking is getting out of hand and now is the right time for someone to step in and actually deal with it.

Legal Parker

Nelson