Fife Council have to mark footways where it is legal to park

The law came into effect on December 11 - it won't be implemented in the Kingdom or anywhere else in the country until next year due to a range of issues - and where there are exemptions the council will have to mark the areas on the footway where it WILL be legal to leave your car.

The South and West Fife area committee was also told that the penalty charge notices handed out for parking offences "are not fit for the purpose" of fining pavement parkers.

There are still a number of technical and legal issues to be resolved before Fife Council can begin to enforce the new pavement parking ban. (Image: Newsquest)

READ MORE: Councillors call for more detail on pavement parking ban

Andy Paterson, lead consultant in car parking strategy and operations, said: "Whilst the legislation is now there, it has been enacted in the Footway Parking Bill which came into effect on the 11th of this month, we're not commencing enforcement yet.

"There are still some technical issues to deal with around enforcing pavement parking, which every local authority in Scotland is still trying to deal with, hence no-one has gone live.

"The decision as to when enforcement starts in Fife will be made by the cabinet committee."

He continued: "There are also exemptions to be taken into account, in areas where it really wouldn't be helpful to have vehicles moved from the pavement onto the road to park.

"All of those will be signed and lined, so effectively these areas of the pavement will be clearly marked and signed that they are available for parking.

"Until those are in place it's quite hard to start enforcement.

"We also have the same technical issues in terms of the legalities of the penalty charge notices that we use.

"They are not fit for the purpose at the moment for pavement parking.

"So that's still being worked on."

The new legislation prohibits pavement parking, double parking and parking at dropped kerbs and offenders face a £100 fine.

READ MORE: Poorly thought out ban 'leaves us with smelly end of stick'

However, Fife are still working through a list of possible exemptions.

Mr Paterson explained: "The decision will be taken on the width of the street and the width of the footway as well, if it's available to accommodate some parking.

"It will probably be determined by that. And we may find, as we move on, people apply for exemptions that we haven't identified.

"It's a huge operation that traffic management have engaged in for the last two-and-a-half years both on desktop and physically looking at roads and streets around Fife.

"Where a street is narrow and there's a wide footway at the moment where people do park, it really wouldn't make sense to have them moving onto the road or displaced elsewhere where they may cause more problems.

"If we can accommodate it we will but these exemptions will have to be in place first."

READ MORE: Fife Council still looking at how ban will work

Cllr Andy Jackson said that Edinburgh Council are set to enforce the law from January 1 and asked why they were ready to go and Fife wasn't.

Mr Paterson replied: "Edinburgh, and I have spoken to them about this, felt they had no justification for any exemptions to this at all.

"Edinburgh's parking operation is not like Fife's, they have no off-street parking that they manage.

"They've not identified anything within their council area that requires an exemption whereas in Fife we do have streets where if people were forced to park on the street it could cause problems in terms of public transport, emergency services and other vehicles getting past."