AIBU in thinking Warwickshire Police have cracked the school parking issue?

[10FrozenFingers]

Now you can take photos of illegal parking and upload it to them. Tickets follow if the parking is seen to be illegal.

"Please be considerate to road users and pedestrians around the school especially during dropping off and picking up times.

Police Officers and Police Community Support Officers are now issuing tickets for those causing unnecessary obstruction of the highway.

We are aware that the situation regarding parking is a bone of contention for all those affected, either picking up a student, leaving the immediate vicinity or local residents accessing or exiting their own homes. We are also aware that with the presence of marked Police vehicles and uniformed officers, the matters seems to resolve itself for the period of time we are there. Therefore, we can now introduce ‘Operation Snap’.
Operation Snap was set up to help reduce demand for frontline Policing. Members of the public can now, via a secure online form, submit digital footage showing potential traffic offences. It has many other uses, but can utilised for unsafe and illegal parking near to schools. Fines can then be directly issued from this.
The secure forms can be accessed on the following link:
www.warwickshire.police.uk/operationsnap

All students and staff deserve the opportunity to leave the school safely and get home uninjured."

Seems to be working.

Parking tickets aside, children who go to school are pupils not students.

Students study. Pupils are taught.

It gets my dander up when schools inflate their own importance by talking about their students (I know the school didn't write that, but they started it).

The problem will come when someone challenges a picture and the photographer is required to verify it in court. There is a reason that speed cameras have to be calibrated and certified.

When parking enforcement attendants - whether council or private - snap a car, they are the witness to the photograph, rather than the reverse.

After all, if you can deepfake Ian Hislop prancing around in a documentary about fake news, it's less work to deepfake a numberplate, if someone so wished.

I'm completely all for reporting bad parking but surely if the school was already there when you moved to live near a school you have to expect it? It depends, I live close to a school and the parking is terrible. The school used to be one form entry so roughly 200 students, probably far fewer families. It is now a three form entry with a preschool so more like 700 students. When my children were at the school most children walked to school, I suppose most of us lived within walking distance, now most seem to arrive by car, the number I see walking past my house is very low.

Most of the roads round the school are an estate built roughly 30 years ago with lots of narrow cul-de-sacs which weren't designed for parking and if people park in them it is almost impossible to get past safely. Dustbin day is fun, I've seen cars hit by the lorry and I feel for the man who drives it as it is a nightmare for him to try and get round.

I live near a school and this would be very welcome! My drive used to always be blocked and I wasn't able to leave for work, so I took to moving my car to the end of the drive so it's parked on the road, and people still abandon their cars wherever so I often can't get out. It's a bus route as well, so it's an absolute nightmare. It makes me laugh when people get the rage and exclaim they're going to have to start walking soon to avoid the traffic, erm good! More people should.

This is another example of the stupidity of scrapping the police-controlled traffic wardens a couple of decades ago. They used to have police radios, had the power to issue a range of parking-related tickets and were often useful in helping out at accidents/events as they had training and powers in traffic control.

Now, we're stuck with council parking wardens who have VERY limited powers re parking tickets, have no traffic control training/powers, and have no direct link with the police.

Whoever was responsible for scrapping traffic wardens should be forced to live next to a school!

A resolution would the school implementing and an adequate pick up and drop off system. No a resolution would be parents using a bit of commonsense and parking safely and realising that they don't have a God given right to park within a 1 minute walk of the school gate.

We have a similar scheme in our area for dashcam footage of poor driving, incidents etc. My DP uploaded footage of some dangerous driving where a cyclist was nearly flattened by an aggressive driver. Cyclist submitted their own footage too. Response back was that they didn't have resources to follow it through. Pointless.

This would be excellent. A relative lives next door to a junior school, in the sort of area where roads are narrow and not really designed for cars. There are double yellow lines on the corner, which extends in front of the garden gate. As I was tidying her garden one afternoon at school pick-up time, I kid you not, it was only about 30 seconds between one illegally parking parent leaving and the next arriving.

It's an OFSTED outstanding school in a naice urban area, so it must be in demand; my bet is that 99% of them are within very easy walking distance.

I very nearly started asking them if they were visually impaired, because they clearly hadn't seen the double yellow lines...

My son's school is regularly visited by a traffic warden. It's amazing how many of the usual offenders suddenly realise how to park legally when he's there.
I wish situations like the op describes didn't have to happen, but no amount of asking nicely or even naming and shaming in the school newsletter seems to work.
I did once see a red sports car getting a ticket as it was parked right on the word SCHOOL on the zig zags. I wanted to stand and clap!

Excellent idea. I live on a road with a school. I cant complain as I have had years of running out the door at 8.55 to get into the school for 9.00, but there is really no need to park on yellow lines, block peoples drives and block pavements with massive 4 x 4's so other peoples children have to walk in the street. I've been late collecting my children because I've come home from work to find my driveway blocked, had to park miles away, walk to school, then walk back to my car to park it in my own driveway before. Its ridiculous and its always the same families that are the worst offenders.

I had to try and diffuse the situation when they started shouting at me and my children and they wouldn't let me open my car door.

We had one of those - more disturbingly, he opened the driver's door to have a go at the father who was driving. (It's Residents Parking - the family was visiting and was parking so that they could go to the house and pick up their Visitors Permit etc.)

Self-appointed warden was wrong and he frightened the people in the car who genuinely thought he was going to attack the driver.

A particularly dreadful series of incidents accompanied the same man who chose to have a go at a lot of extra drivers who had parked up for a funeral (they were going to the house for the tea).

It can be surprising how being emboldened by some authority borrowed from the state (altho' it isn't) can go to people's heads.

I suspect they are hoping no one challenges them ... (or that no one can afford to challenge them). If it came to a bunfight in court, it could prove ... interesting

The same thought occurred to me and I've no doubt the local Facebooks will be in meltdown, with self-proclaimed "legal experts" explaining why they can't do it

Personally I don't claim any legal knowledge, but presumably the police will have taken advice over what sounds a brilliant idea?

Would it be easier to just implement CCTV?

Wouldn't worry me as I never park like a twat and mostly walk to and from school unless I have work and then I park sensibly and walk the rest of the way
However I'd also like to see a general crack down on pavement parking as well. People park on the pavement outside my house and literally block my exit from the house 😳

However I'd also like to see a general crack down on pavement parking as well.

DW is a wheelchair user, and a badly parked car can simply stop her in her tracks if there isn't enough room.

Also the absolute cunts that block dropped kerbs. A rusty razor would be a luxury by the time had finished flaying them with a belt sander.

Would give me something to do with my MAT leave Parking at my DDs school is atrocious and it’s fairly common for ‘near miss’ warnings of children almost being hit to be sent out.

@coconuttelegraph they will see taking a picture of their car a challenge. The problem at our school is mostly the parents who sit in their cars on the zig zags and single yellow lines outside the school for up to 45 minutes before and after school, they can see if people are taking photographs.
One parent has been doing exactly this and sending the pictures to the council, police and school governors, he has been threatened and had his phone snatched out of his hand and thrown to the ground. Other people just walking with their phone out have been shouted at because it's assumed they are taking pictures.

"Operation Snap" is a nationwide initiative. It's been around for years, nothing new to Hampshire.

Be aware, you must send any photos/videos within 14 days of the alleged offence. You may well have to attend court as a witness because, well, YOU are the only witness.

Also, this initiative can and does have unintended consequences, which is why other forces haven't encouraged it. If you start taking pictures of random strangers cars, they WILL object and challenge you, this usually leads to other public order offences being committed, on both sides. Also it's a really stupid idea to encourage people to take pictures of other parents when they have their kids with them.

Are you taking my picture because you don't like the way I have parked, or are you doing it because you like my child? Are you a Paedo?

This will end in tears.

We need to address why walking to school for many parents (who live nearby) as gone out of fashion.

Its because most parents go straight on to work after drop off. There are far less SAHP than there were 30 years ago.

Maybe they can do a system where first offence you get a warning and your car noted then anything after that is a fine

Oh I would love that. At my DC school there is a car park that parents can use which is a 5-minute walk away, maybe 7 minutes if your child really really dawdles. Still, every bloody day there are cars parked on the zig-zags right outside the school, cars on the double yellows, cars blocking the bus stops, cars zipping up onto the pavement as children are walking past. There's one parent who parks at the entrance to a school footpath so you have to practically sidestep past and God help you if you've got a pram or wheelchair. Bastards.

"The problem will come when someone challenges a picture and the photographer is required to verify it in court. There is a reason that speed cameras have to be calibrated and certified."

Exactly.
But it's probably still a worthwhile endeavour from a deterrent pov and the percentage of people who will bother risk going to court so you'd hope it would have a positive effect even though it is going to struggle with those who do challenge

Maybe they can do a system where first offence you get a warning and your car noted then anything after that is a fine

But we return to the issue of the evidence for the "offence". If it's not good enough for court, it's not good enough for a warning. If it's good enough for court, why piss around with "warnings" ?

I would absolutely love our local police force to bro of this in around here! Not a day goes by when I'm forced into the road with a buggy and a toddler or have to squeeze through a tiny gap because someone's parked fully on the pavement. And it's not just outside school either!

But it's probably still a worthwhile endeavour from a deterrent pov and the percentage of people who will bother risk going to court so you'd hope it would have a positive effect even though it is going to struggle with those who do challenge

It's only a deterrent if it has a real risk. If word gets out that without a witness the pictures are of no use, then all you have done is created a bunch of folk who'll be thumbing their nose at the law even more than before. Generally that's regarded as a "bad public policy" in legal jurisprudence.

The real problem has nothing to do with parking anyway.