Have zero sympathy for parents for parents being fined for breaking parking rules outside schools

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https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/parents-slam-school-parking-madness-10674874?utm_source=mynewsassistant.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=embedded_search_item_desktop

Parents are moaning about CoL with fines parking on double yellow, zig zags etc.

One stupid quote from a parent
"I don’t understand why the fines are being handed out anyway. For those who park up more than 30 minutes at a time, fair enough they should be fined but for those who park for 10 minutes there needs to be more understanding."
"Times are hard as it is anyway and adding that extra expense of the ticket, on top of living costs rising is just unnecessary. Its putting more pressure on parents. The money I spent on that fine could be spent on putting a smile on my child’s face."

Well if you read the Highway Code, leave a few minutes earlier and get your DC to walk either from home or park down a side street (not on parking restricted lines/bays) about 5 min walk from the school, you won't risk getting a fine.

No sympathy from me.

I believe the removing the boundaries for parents to apply for their DC to attend schools outside catchment areas isn't doing this any favours. In the old days when I was at school, if you wanted your DC to attend a certain school, you moved home.

Also what are the chances are these parents are driving newish (less than 3 years old) cars that cost them £50k?

They need to do something else though. The zigzags are there so people can safely cross. Why is their need to get to work more important than other people’s safety?

Yes that's a massive issue @Peridoteage . Parents now have to pay through the nose for every minute they're not with their child, and someone on minimum wage would be making a poor financial decision to hand over the equivalent of an hour's work rather than park a bit skewhiff for a few moments.

They deserve every penny of those fines, where i live there are 2 primary schools within 500 yards of each other from 2pm until 3:15pm it is like a warzone, surprised there hasn't been a serious accident yet.

Because for people who aren't professionals with flexible hours, getting to work late means losing their job, losing their livelihood and being unable to support their family.

What other laws should they break to make sure they get there on time? Drive 90 down the motorway? Go through some red lights? Why should this law be ignored.

I 100% know it’s shit for many people but don’t understand why this law is ok to break but not others?

Leave home earlier then - no excuse for bad parking and putting others in danger

The big issue is that even with organised parking people still risk the lives of kids by parking like utter wankers.

The primary school at the end of our street have a parking agreement with the pub. Parents can park for free for 20 minutes between 7am and 9am and between 3pm and 4pm.

The school is literally 300 yards away. There is also a walking bus that you can leave your child with at 8.40 and 3.40.

Yet people still park like complete fuckwits on the street (blocking drives) and blocking the school car park and yellow zig zags.

theres a sports centre car park next to our secondary which parents can use. Instead loads will double park, sometimes on both sides, as clearly their children’s legs are broken. Even though they have been walking around a massive school site all day.
School is on a busy road and it was a total standstill one day with the parents parking, total chaos.

Well they will a lot later for work if they run a child over while launching their SUV onto the pavement.

Seriously. The ones parking an hour before the school closes aren't the struggling parents. Plenty of parents manage to park safely every day.

There is a major issue over 'enforcement'

We lost something like 20000 police officers and a similar number of support staff under the last Conservative Government plus of course all the cuts to Local Authority, HMRC etc enforcement and this is one of the consequences.

Thats before you get to Car Brain.

May I suggest that we treat 'Bad Driving' as a child protection issue so if you act like a twat in a car you get the same sort of treatment that Kiddy Fiddlers now get ie Jail, Funny Farm, Requirement to Register, restrictions on contact with children etc?

But that means giving over a chunk of wage to breakfast club, if there even is one.

My kids' primary school is part of a larger council owner piece of land. There is a carpark on the left which belongs to one sports club and is free to park. On the right there is a car park that belongs to the gym and is also free to use (also sure start and community midwives based on the campus). Both can hold around 30 to 50 cars and there's also parking on streets further away including my mum's which is all of 200m from school. Thankfully most parents walk with their kids or park like sensible thoughtful humans.

Did the abundance of parking options stop parents from trying to get into the teacher/staff car park and breaking the barrier in the process, not once but twice

Does this stop the parents parking on double yellows and blocking the road? Also no

Does this mean that parents don't insist on parking their car entirely on pavements and then getting very upset as people squeeze past their car so that kids and parents don't have to walk down the middle of the road. It was a terrible shame when my son's buggy would scrape a car. Very unfortunate.

It was the same at the school where I was governor which had a very different demographic of parents but people just lose their minds when it comes to driving kids to school. I swear if the doors were wider some of these parents would drive into the school hall to drop their kids off.

I 100% know it’s shit for many people

Yes, it is. There's your starting point.

I believe the removing the boundaries for parents to apply for their DC to attend schools outside catchment areas isn't doing this any favours. In the old days when I was at school, if you wanted your DC to attend a certain school, you moved home.
Also what are the chances are these parents are driving newish (less than 3 years old) cars that cost them £50k?

OP, I was with you until you went off on an unnecessary rant at the end.

I live one mile from the catchment school, all down a steep single track road with no pavement or street lighting. I choose to send DD out of catchment to a school 3 miles the other direction. I'd need to drive my £6k Dacia to either school.

But that doesn’t mean you break the law. What other laws are acceptable to break to get to work on time. The rule is there to stop children from being run over. It’s not just a stupid rule.

Never mind Parking Fines I suggest that Social Services need to get involved

Our Parish Council has come up with a novel way of stopping a lot of the pavement parking... they recently installed massive planters along the grass verge so now the cars physically cannot mount the pavement. They are still parking like idiots, but the pavements nearest the gate are now a lot safer

At one stage there were Chicanes on the main road in a nearby village

The look on Pete the Prats face as he drove into one of the planters was a joy to behold

Bugger all to do with catchment my neighbour drives their child to school. The school is down the end of our street. No excuse. Just lazy self entitled.

My heart skips a beat when I see the wardens out. Which they send a team of six! When they do come parking is that bad. We have two zebra crossings but parents drive like it’s fast and furious over them. A shop car park and two open church car parks. But arseholes be arseholes.

And no it’s not the poor parents. It tend to be the higher earners and those who live bloody closest.

An idea, have dummy cameras at every school but 1 in 5 to 10 cameras have actually has a camera. Change every 2 weeks.

Fines from parents dangerous and stupid parking funds the new cameras

The primary school my children went to, had a huge car park directly opposite the school, and it took two minutes to walk to the school, yet some parents still couldn't be arsed to use it, preferring to cause traffic chaos instead.

Its not difficult.

I agree. I always park a five minutes walk from the school BUT I'm lucky to have a job where it doesn't matter much if I'm ten minutes late - which I am, every morning, even after running back to the car like a total loon. I'm also lucky that my kids love school and are happy to be shoved through the gates the minute they open so I can bolt back to the car.

I really feel for the parents whose workplaces aren't as relaxed as mine who are chivvying their kids down the school drive with the thought that they have to be at their desk in fifteen minutes lingering in the back of their mind. It's shit. And it's all well and good blithely saying "well, get another job" or "just pay for breakfast club" but jobs that fit in around school hours are like hens teeth, and breakfast club payments are crippling.

Parking illegally is unacceptable, but I wish life was easier for working parents.

Whats happened to these "free" breakfast clubs that apparently every school was getting?"

There are plenty of Dad's that also do the school run around here.