Caught by sneaky wardens

So that’s twice now I’ve been landed with a parking ticket in Whitstable.

The first time was outside Samphire restaurant on the High Street. It was about seven o’clock in the evening. I was dropping off my aged and partially-sighted father at the Shobab, where we were meeting the rest of my family for dinner, and parked in what, to my untrained eye, looked like a parking bay.

You know the place I mean. It’s off the road, causing no traffic hazard and the double yellow lines go outside the bay rather than inside it. There are no signs to show that it is anything other than a parking bay, and lots of cars park there on a regular basis.

But it is not a parking bay. It is place where, despite the obvious invitation to park, no parking is allowed.

The second time was in the car park off Victoria Street. This time I was out with my dad and my brother eating fish and chips at VC Jones’ and – stupid me – I thought that that there would be no parking fees after seven in the evening.

In fact I parked there at around 7.20, and had a ticket by 7.21, which leads me to suspect that the traffic warden was lurking about in the bushes, waiting for just such an opportunity.

But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What’s the point of parking restrictions? I always thought they had something to do with safety, with stopping traffic hazards and congestion on our through roads at peak times of the day. That’s why most parking restrictions are dropped after six in the evening.

Not so in Whitstable, it seems. In our little town the council has extended parking restrictions till late in the evening, and employed an enforcement officer to sneak about after hours while other people are eating their dinner in order to catch them out.

In Whitstable the parking restrictions have nothing to do with safety. Rather they are a way for Canterbury City Council to earn itself some extra income at the public’s expense.