Councils across England have been granted powers to enforce pavement parking in their areas after changes to legislation.
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act received royal assent which includes landmark legislation for authorities to tackle dangerous parking.
Councils will now be able to dish out fines to motorists who are deemed to be blocking footpaths with their vehicles, even if they have just a single wheel on the kerb.
The law change is being celebrated by disability groups as a victory against selfish drivers who persistently create dangerous scenarios for those with poor visibility and require the use of wheelchairs and mobility scooters.
However, some motorists are likely to look upon it as another means to attack the nation’s drivers with penalties to bolster council coffers.
The change to law comes more than five years after the Tory Government launched a consultation into tackling pavement parking at a local and national level in which four in five people said parking on footpaths was a problem in their region.
Two in five of the 15,000 respondents also said they would leave home more often if pavement parking issues were addressed where they live. Yet, no further action was taken at the time.
New laws giving councils the powers to make pavement parking illegal in their areas received royal assent this week. Motorists could soon be at risk of being ticketed. Labour’s proposal to tackle pavement parking will be delivered in two phases.
By the end of 2026, ministers intend to give local authority civil enforcement officers (CEOs) powers to ticket obstruction on the footway.
At present, only the police can issue penalty charges to vehicles deemed to be causing an obstruction across much of England.
CEOs can use their existing powers to enforce against parking on dropped kerbs or adjacent to yellow lines, and these amendments to regulations will expand their ability to tackle the worst instances of cars blocking pavements.
The second stage will be to create a national regulatory framework, giving local authorities broader powers to enforce against pavement parking and more efficient means to introduce signage and exemption-making provisions.
The Government has announced it will give councils the powers to enforce pavement parking bans across their regions following widespread support for a clampdown on drivers blocking footpaths.
Charity Guide Dogs says it is ‘delighted’ with the law change, having ‘campaigned for decades’ to ban drivers causing obstruction for people with visibility impairments and blindness.
The legislation means parking enforcement across England will be brought in line with rules in London that have existed for over half a century. In the capital, penalty charges for parking on the footway range from £60 to £130, though fines are halved if paid within a fortnight.
To date, councils in England have been able to impose pavement parking bans on individual streets, though this has required a lengthy and prolonged application process with limited enforcement.
Under the new rules, exemptions will be allowed where needed. This includes on narrow residential streets where drivers partially park on the pavement as to not block the highway.
Scotland also introduced a similar law in 2023. The Northern Irish Government too announced in 2025 its intention to introduce new powers restricting pavement parking, while Wales is exploring options to tackle the issue.
Source here