A Labour-run council has threatened locals with hefty £1,000 fines for parking their vehicles on their driveway. According to locals, Southampton City Council has sent letters to residents who drive over non-dropped kerbs to access their property.
The Telegraph reports that one letter posted to a resident accused the owner of gaining access to their property "unlawfully" by "crossing the kerbed footway". The letter suggested this could lead to "damage of the public highway" with road users instead urged to apply for council permission to install a dropped kerb. However, this comes at a hefty cost with homeowners likely to be slapped with around a £600 bill to secure the rights to a dropped kerb followed by £165 in labor fees.
Councillor Christie Lambert, Cabinet Member for Transport at Southampton City Council, stressed that it was "important" that vehicle crossings are built properly to limit damage to the footpath.
In a statement to the Express, he said: "Footways are not generally constructed to hold the weight of a vehicle, and often cover services and utilities which can be damaged. This is why it is important vehicle crossings are constructed correctly and with permission from the Highway Authority. Under the Highways Act 1980, the Highway Authority can reclaim costs for damages caused to the highway.
"This is not a new process for Southampton and through the Highways Service Partnership, during their routine inspections, Highway Inspectors will serve notice to a property which the Inspector has observed a vehicle parked where it must have driven over the footway illegally to get there.”
The Highways Act 1980, states that officials have the power to notify anyone illegally driving over a footpath to access a building.
But Southampton City Council has not yet issued any fines for road users for breaking the rules. One Conservative councillor described the move as "unnecessarily heavy-handed".
However, Mr Lambert added: "We follow a process of three separate notices being served, and it is the third and final notice which warns that the Highway Authority can recover costs for repairing damage.
"Our goal is to encourage compliance, and we work with residents to take them through the dropped kerb application process.
"Every Highway Authority in England has similar processes to deter the use of illegal vehicle crossovers, as it can cost the authority tens of thousands of pounds to repair a footway if the structure has been weakened and underground utilities damaged by vehicles passing over it where they shouldn’t."
