My Lords, I support the amendment, whose importance has been ably and eloquently demonstrated by the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Tope. It is quite clear that the present situation is costly and complex, as has been said. I should like very briefly, given the hour, to demonstrate how in Worcester—one of the few cities in the UK that has tried to tackle the problem of pavement parking —there have been difficulties because of the current situation.
As is well known, the history of parking enforcement is complicated. Parking on pavements was made a criminal offence under the Worcester City Council Act 1985, but under the Road Traffic Act 1991 it was decriminalised, so that could no longer apply. Despite that, Worcester City Council has continued to try to tackle the problem, and in January 2014 civil enforcement officers began enforcing the most serious cases using existing traffic regulation orders. Worcestershire County Council was originally asked for a city-wide traffic regulation order, but this would have required hundreds of street signs wherever parking on pavements took place, and that was considered untenable. That simply demonstrates how difficult the present situation is. The county council suggested that the city council should look at the issue on a street-by-street basis and generate individual traffic regulation orders, but the city council thought that this approach would be untenable as well.
It seems to me that all that demonstrates the need for a national system. It is worth bearing in mind that those who are blind and disabled feel particularly strongly about this. A blind Paralympian who lives in Worcester said recently that walking down the city’s clogged-up streets is like playing Russian roulette.