To complain to school about parking? Diagram included

[yellowallpaper]

We have a primary school on our estate (nice school, kids used to attend).

It's the usual chaos of parking around 3 o'clock when I am heading out to collect mine. Parents generally don't park on the yellow lines but every inch of road is packed with cars.

Outside the school is an area of grass. So yesterday I saw a woman drive over the yellow zigzags over the curb, onto the pavement on park up on this grass. Not see this before and I can see that if it becomes a regular thing by December the grass will be a torn up muddy eyesore on my road. I also think it's illegal to drive over a pavement if there is no dropped curb?

WIBU to report this to the headteacher, or am I being a bit of a nimby?

@Winesalot

"If I go out to ask people to not park across my dropped kerb, I get abused"

This is shocking, what is wrong with people? Why do people automatically move to abuse when they're in the wrong?

Yes nip it in the bud now. I had to complain to our local school as parents blocked our drive every afternoon, and wouldn’t move so we could get out. I took a photo and emailed the school and the head was really good.

Definitely talk to the school and if they are no use your local council. We have a lot of problems with parking at my DCs school, it now quite common to see the PCSO or a parking warden after school. They recently added double yellow lines on the main road to help with traffic flow but unfortunately there aren’t many side roads near by so you see a lot of people parking stupidly, some arrive almost an hour before school finishes just to make sure they can park

We had this - we reported it to the council and after monitoring it they came and put in little wooden posts to stop them.

It's a shame that they have to resort to these measures because people don't stick to rules / act with any common courtesy but it did solve the problem.

I hear you @GinDaddy. They slip into defensive mode, I guess. I get told to ‘get a life’ often.

I have given up trying to deal with it myself after having to pay extra as my plumber was blocked in my driveway, having to miss a doctors appointment etc. it was always someone who was just ‘a few minutes’ but forgot and was a whole lot more!!

A parent at our school does similar, drives over zig zags and parks on pavement adjacent to the school crossing!

Yes, talk to the school. Yes, take photos (every time). Yes, report to police with dates and reg no. They can pop round at home and embarrass the repeat offender and may well do so. The offender won't know it's you if you are crafty with the camera.

Some schools get the children involved making slow down, 20 smiles an hour, keep us safe, don't park here, signs that can be printed onto that tarpaulin stuff and wired to school fence or railings.

Y6 children could pop out last thing in high-vis tabards with clipboards to survey parking or even interview parked-up parents (under adult supervision!) Children power can be very powerful.

We had one parent, always late dropping off, who clearly thought the yellow zig-zags were saying reserved for (his name). After two warnings, the head arranged for the police to be waiting for him one morning.

That fixed it!

Wow. Not one person saying I am being unreasonable.

Second diagram to show the grass belongs to the school along with the hedges. Dotted line shows boundaries.

Yes mention it to the school, it’s dangerous to drive across the pavement especially right outside the school.
Our school will get complaints from the locals and frequently send out emails about not parking across dropped curbs.
They also have a traffic warden come by every now and again and loiter around the yellow zig zags. I’m all for it.

Once one driver parks there without being stopped, others will copy.

Presumably children will be walking across that grass, believing they are safe, and are being put at risk of being hit by the car(s) on the grass and by having their view of the road obstructed for crossing safely.

If you're not sure whether to report it, think about how you will feel if there is an accident and you said nothing. If you're comfortable that the risk is low then fine, but from what you've said, please tell the school.

If the school perceives there to be a risk, they can (should, as it's about children's safety) remind parents not to do this, ask the police or council to send a PCSO or Parking Enforcement Officer (according to what is done locally) to monitor, and do some Road Safety awareness work with the children.

If it turns out that the parent were a Blue Badge holder who genuinely needed to park close to school, the school may be able to set something up to help them.

Great diagram

(Waits patiently until school pick up time for an update....)

If it is on school grounds the school will definitely want to know about it as they won't want cars churning up grass as well as the dangers of cars driving where they would not be expected to drive.

Blue badge holders can drive in the gates and park inside the boundary, so not a BB holder.

I'll definitely be loitering to see if it's repeated as well as in the future

Good luck with this. My DC’s school really tried hard for a few weeks to push the parking agenda but nobody stuck to it at all so they gave up. Everyone parks on the double yellows and in the bus stop outside school, lazy selfish dickheads.

No parking wardens here, it's a village. Towns must be even more hellish.

They had banners up on the fences about safe parking and sent letters home but literally nobody paid a blind bit of notice. The school asked parents to park up the road in a supermarket car park but because its a 5 minute walk from the school, they refused. Lazy entitled arseholes.

Report to the council

Can the Parish Council help?

whatrodowith. Honestly that is appalling. Around here we are mostly unentitled wimps and if any headteacher says jump, we say how high! We all dread the endless school directives.

I took a photo of a car parked right over the raised crossing once. School told me to phone the police, which I did even though it felt so minor and like I was being a right tell tale. They actually sent someone out there and then (and this was only about 6 months ago). The car had gone but because I'd given them the reg number they went to the car owner's house to have a word . School also put out a notice that afternoon on their online info sharing thing saying not to park over the crossings. As far as I know, no-one has parked there since.

I showed the photo to my traffic warden friend and he said that he wouldn't have been able to ticket the driver though because although it's a raised crossing, it's not marked as such and is more like a wide speed bump so phoning the police was better than the council in that situation.

Some parents would drive into their children's classesv to save them from walking at all given half the chance.

Presumably they'll have to reverse across the pavement to get back out.
How dangerous and selfish!

They used to do this outside our school. My husband had some spare large stones (decorative ones) that he put on the grass verge to stop them!

I read yesterday that there's a new app that, if the local council co-operates, will allow anyone with a phone camera to photograph cars committing an offence, and get 25% of the resulting fine...

Yes I would inform the school with the following caveats.

1. They have no jurisdiction outside their property. So they could put a notice in the newsletter warning parents that anyone seen driving up the kerb over the pavement may be reported to the police.

1. Disregarding the driving across the pavement they are entitled if they own the grass to allow people to park on it. I've actually parked on grass at my son's school (accessed legally mind and for the purposes of delivering expensive equipment I was loaning for a school event and I was asked to wait until after the bell had gone).

However you could take the tack that you are concerned that this parking is causing a potential danger to children walking to school and you felt they ought to know.

@PettyContractor I have heard about the possibility of this! I can’t wait. I will make a lot of money just from people parking across my drop down (which now has double yellow lines but they still park. And I mean park not just dropping off or picking up and No, they have no BB).