A FORMER parish councillor has called for better communication “to try and change the culture” of motorists parking on pavements.

Peter Evans, a former chair of Dodderhill Parish Council, believes the authorities must change tactics to resolve the issue, and prevent disgruntled residents from becoming vigilantes.

“What needs to be done is communication to try and change the culture of people who think their FIAT 500 is in danger being parked on the road," he said.

“I’ve asked over and over again the parish council to start putting notifications out saying: ‘We don’t want you to do it.’

“I do it, I put my own notices on windscreens,” he continued. “I can’t be a vigilante like that, it needs the support of the authorities, and if the police can’t do it, the parish council should be doing something.”

Mr Evans, who lives in Chequers Lane, Wychbold, was speaking at a public meeting earlier this month, and said his grandson uses a wheelchair, and said: “We should not have to walk into the road to get past cars.

“Constantly, the police say the council, the council say it’s the police,” he added.

PC Tony Carter, also at the meeting, said the police are “toothless tigers” in regards to preventing people parking on pavements, since the government decriminalised the act.

“I haven't even got a ticket book anymore and so Wychavon [District Council] should be dealing with it but they have 13 civil enforcement officers to cover the whole area."

“My position is, I can't enforce it, because they took it off me, literally, they decriminalised it but the [district] council choose not to enforce it because they can't.”

Council chair Alyson Keane said she understands, by law, it “becomes an offence if you catch them at the time”.

“If you catch that car you have to make a complaint there and then to the police and it's obstruction but you have to show evidence that you can't pass that car. If you're trying to get a pram down and you can't, it's at the time.”

PC Carter went on to say he can forward letter templates to the parish council which say “antisocial parking is not acceptable” and can be put on offenders’ windscreens.

He said the letters have the West Mercia Police logo on them and his name, and can be altered for outside schools and other areas.

“It just says why they shouldn't be parking, and most of the points are covered and more about the antisocial behaviour, about stopping people using footpath and the negative effect it has. It lists them all.

“Really, it's just an annoyance letter for people. It’s got the backing of the force.

“What I'd like to do is to go and put that on and be able to ticket them, but I can't and that was the travesty of decriminalisation of all the parking stuff.

"Every officer in West Mercia had a traffic book and if they saw a car parked on a double yellow line, I used to stop, two minutes put a ticket and every officer had a choice to do that and it had an effect, but now, none of us have got the choice.

“They've taken the books off us and none of us are legally allowed to do it.

“There's 2,000 officers in West Mercia now and there's probably 300 in this area and 13 parking people for the same amount. You do the maths.

"Who's going to get the best results?”