East Wichel parking restriction proposals announced

Details of parking restrictions proposed for East Wichel were given at the Community Association meeting on Wednesday. Swindon Borough Council have published detailed plans showing the location of each parking bay and every parking restriction sign.

Following a change in policy from central government, the council no longer needs to get government approval from the scheme, which would have required evidence of community support. The council’s representatives stated that the council’s view is that the scheme has to go ahead as East Wichel has been built with roads too narrow to allow much street parking. The forthcoming consultation will therefore be only on the details of the scheme, not on the principle of whether there should be parking restrictions. This lead to some lively discussion at the community association meeting, with strong opinions expressed by residents both in favour and against parking restrictions. For those that had not been told of the restrictions by their house builder, the council said the house owner’s dispute should be with the house builder not the council.

Details of the proposed scheme are:

• on-street parking will not be allowed throughout the whole of East Wichel, except in designated parking bays;
• bays where parking is permitted will be marked on the road;
• there will not be yellow lines on the roads to show where parking is not permitted, but there will be signs stating the restrictions throughout East Wichel;
• residents will not need to apply for parking permits — permit schemes are usually only used where there is a problem of commuters parking in residential streets;
• although referred to as ‘visitor parking’ in the consultation documents, the parking bays will not be restricted to visitors — anyone can park in the parking bays — though this could be changed either as a result of the consultation or later;
• anyone parking in an area other than a designating parking bay will be at risk of a fixed penalty charge.

The formal consultation is expected to start in about three weeks time and will then last for three weeks. As part of the consultation, the council said they would welcome residents identifying additional areas where parking could be safely permitted.

The council expects the parking restrictions to start by the end of the year, well before the council adopts the roads and takes over maintenance from Taylor Wimpey.

Update, 29 July 2014: The council have now confirmed that a ‘pre-consultation’ for East Wichel residents will run until Friday 8 August. Comments on the proposals should be sent to .