A councillor is urging motorists to make the most of free parking in town centre car parks after complaints of parking on pavements.
Blackwood independent councillor Nigel Dix had written to Caerphilly County Borough Council asking for measures to be taken to make Blackwood High Street safer.
Parking will be free at all council-owned pay and display car parks for the rest of the year, with the reintroduction of charges planned for January, 2021.
Cllr Dix said: “Currently we have vehicles that use the footpath to park on.
“I urge drivers to take advantage of the free parking that is available until January 2021 and not park on the footpath.
“This behaviour is not acceptable and puts pedestrians at risk of being knocked over.
“If the town is to comply safely with social distancing, whereby people have to keep two metres apart and queue up outside shops until they are let in, the council need to ensure that the footpath is a safe place to use.”
A spokesperson for Caerphilly County Borough Council said council officers had met with the three Blackwood councillors, as well as Blackwood Town Council, to discuss placing outdoor cafe seating and a widened pedestrian walkway in parts of the high street to discourage pavement parking.
The spokesperson said: “The proposals have been supported by the three local members, town council clerk and traders.
“This proposal will also help to reduce pavement parking in the town and this was communicated to the councillors when council officers presented the proposals to them.”
The original accompanying image to this article depicted a car on a pavement in Blackwood. This was sent to us by a reader and used in good faith. It has since come to our attention that this image was not an example of ‘bad parking’ but the result of a driver leaving their handbrake off and their car rolling.
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Clamp and fine …. always worked before COVID , what constitutes such selfish actions by people/ drivers ??
Where are the Councils Parking Wardens?
Considering the Pay & Display car parks are free until January 2021, this should allow them to spend most of their time enforcing town centre parking !
Yet we dont see them !
This photo appeared on the South Wales Updates Facebook page on 22 July where it was commented that an elderly gentleman had forgotten to put his handbrake on and was very upset. Why is it being used on an article on parking with the tag line
‘A recent example of parking in Blackwood’? Lazy and irresponsible journalism in a time when accurate reporting is more important than ever – especially when there are plenty of accurate pictures of terrible parking in Blackwood available!
Hi Rhiannon,
Thank you for pointing this out. The picture was sent to us and used in good faith – we understood it to be an original picture. I have removed the picture and will make sure we do more to verify contributions before publication.
Using terms such as ‘lazy and irresponsible journalism’ help no-one and this description of us is not who we are.
As you can appreciate, we operate on very limited resources. As such, we are asking readers to contribute to help fund our journalism – the more journalists we have, the less likely mistakes like this will happen.
To find out how you can help improve our journalism go to https://caerphilly.observer/membership/
Many thanks for reading