Edinburgh pavement parking ban exposes poor condition of city's footpaths

Edinburgh’s pavement parking ban has revealed the true state of the Capital’s footpaths, landing the council with a bigger repair bill, at least in the short term.

Transport convener Scott Arthur said the introduction of the ban on January 29 meant vehicles were no longer covering large parts of the pavements in some parts of the city, and the poor condition of pavements had been exposed to public view.

He said: “Now that people can actually see the pavement on their street, quite often they're finding it has been utterly destroyed by cars having parked on it. So we've had a rise in complaints about footways because of this.

“While that’s going to cause us a problem, in a way it’s a welcome problem because we've got these cars off the footways. And we're hopeful that in the coming years the cars will do much less damage to footways and we'll start to really feel the benefit of that in term of the amount of money we have to spend to keep them in a good condition.”

The council is spending a total of £12.5 million on improvements to roads and footpaths this year, with 219 identified for investment. And it is to prioritise pavements in poorer parts of the city on the grounds residents in areas of deprivation are less likely to have cars and are therefore more affected by footpaths in poor condition.

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 bans pavement parking, double parking and parking at dropped kerbs, but council have only had the powers to enforce the ban since December 2023.

Edinburgh became the first local authority in Scotland to enforce the pavement parking ban when it started doing so in January. Drivers who ignore the ban risk a £100 fine, which is reduced to £50 it it is paid within 14 days but increases to £150 if it is not paid within 28 days.

More than 600 fines were issued in the first four weeks of the ban. Figures from the council showed 479 fixed penalty notices were handed out for parking on a pavement, 28 for parking next to a dropped kerb at a known crossing point and 109 for double parking.