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    Dover MP calls for traffic wardens to deal with lorries because police aren't
     
    **PRESS RELEASE**
     
    Dover and Deal MP Charlie Elphicke is calling for traffic wardens to start fining lorry drivers for brazenly blocking roads.
     
    Under current law, only the police can deal with vehicles parked dangerously or right in front of homes and businesses.
     
    But officers busy dealing with serious crime treat reports of obstructive parking as low priority and fail to deal with them.
     
    Shocking statistics show the number of fines has dropped by 97 per cent in the last 15 years, from more than a million across the UK in 2001 to just 42,800 last year.
     
    It means in places like Poulton Close in Dover, lorry drivers block residential roads for several days at a time.
     
    They often leave litter lying around – and some residents come home to find they can not even get to their driveway.
     
    Yet only a fraction of offences are ever dealt with, official crime figures show.
     
    Charlie said: “Rather than targeting people who have just nipped into the shops – surely traffic wardens would be much better off ridding our roads of poorly parked lorries, many of which are from overseas.
     
    “It’s common sense that traffic wardens should be doing this, while the police get on with making our streets safer by hunting down violent criminals.
     
    “In Dover and Deal, residents and business owners are fed up with lorry drivers brazenly blocking driveways and littering.
     
    “Yet the police are hardly dealing with parking issues at all any more.
     
    “It’s time for traffic wardens to step up and rid our roads of these lorries.”
     
    Charlie has contacted the Home Office and the Department for Transport about amending legislation.
     
    The Road Traffic Act 1991 permits local authorities to enforce yellow lines, time-limited waiting and other parking restrictions and keep proceeds from fines.
     
    But powers to deal with dangerous or obstructive parking remain with police.
     
    **ENDS**
     

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