Pavement Parking Campaign

At Living Streets, we are regularly contacted about the problem of people parking their vehicles on pavements. Obstructing footways with cars and vans causes major problems for anyone in a wheelchair, pushing a buggy or using mobility aids - often forcing them to walk in the road and take their chances with the traffic.

Stop pavement parking

It's an area that some of our local groups have been getting active on, and with noticeably positive results. We've worked with them to produce materials to help you start a local campaign, if pavement parking is causing problems in your area. On this page you can download a flyer that can be placed on offending vehicles to highlight the problem, a press release that you can amend and send out to the local paper, and some policy background on parking issues in the UK.

Flyer

After speaking with a number of our local groups, we've created a black and white A5 flyer for you to download and print off.

Pavement Parking Flyer PDF (192Kb)


Please don't use any kind of adhesive glue to stick these flyers on to cars. We find that placing them under the windscreen wiper is the best way of securing them and getting the message across. Ideally we would encourage you to identify a particularly bad area of pavement parking to target at first; make a note of how many cars you flyer, and of whether the situation changes over days and weeks following repeated flyering. If you are planning a campaign and want to alter the flyer to include your personal details, then contact Lucy using the email below, and we can amend it for you. If you can't organise a campaign, why not take some out with you when you go shopping, so you can catch perpetrators on the hoof.

Press Release

Some groups, in particular our Norwich branch, have used their flyering campaigns to generate a significant amount of positive coverage in the local press. Even if you don't have a contact at your local paper yet, why not phone up their news desk, and ask which reporter covers your local area. Once you've found out their details, you can offer to email them a press release to explain more about the campaign. Here's a model release that you can download in Word and amend with your local details.

Model press release for you to amend. MS Word (50Kb)

Policy Background

Living Streets produces policy briefings that outline our views on different issues. Below is a link to our briefing covering parking - it should help to provide background information on the subject and may help crystallise your views regarding your local situation.

Policy Briefing 13: Parking PDF (104Kb)

Let us know how you get on...

We know that pavement parking is a big problem in many communities around the UK. If you decide to use these resources to highlight it as a problem, then do let us know how it goes. If you would like other resources to be made available, then feel free to contact us with further suggestions.
Good luck!

We can only run campaigns like this with your help. Why not join Living Streets as a supporter? You can find more information here.

For more information, or to let us know about your activities, contact Lucy Abell on lucy.abell@livingstreets.org.uk. Thanks in particular to Ian Campbell and John Peacock, two of our local activists, for their help with these materials.