Estate residents urge action against illegal parking

People living in Brighton housing estates say illegal parking is disrupting their lives as ambulances, wheelchairs and pushchairs are being blocked by parked cars.

Representatives from the Bates Estate, Coldean, North Moulsecoomb and Hollingdean have urged Brighton and Hove City Council to take action at a council housing management panel meeting on 10 June.

They called for better enforcement and councillor Trevor Muten, cabinet member for transport and parking, to be present at their next meeting, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The council has asked residents to share dates and locations of times they believed there was no enforcement for investigation.

Hollingdean Residents' Association secretary Ian Beck said: "With the aid of the council, we got double yellow lines put around each of these closes.

"But an ambulance tried to get into my street a few days ago for an emergency with a 92-year-old woman but could not get in because a van was parked on the double yellow lines."

The meeting was told that vehicles blocking Southmount, off Davey Drive, also delayed another ambulance which took 25 minutes to leave the road due to parked cars.

Cars parked across dropped kerbs, restricting access for people in wheelchairs and parents with children in pushchairs, were also said to have affected people living on the Bates Estate and in North Moulsecoomb and Coldean.

On football match days at Brighton and Hove Albion, parking issues were described as "massively increasing" by residents despite parking restrictions being in place on estates closest to the Amex stadium.

However, almost a quarter of the council's parking enforcement team were deployed in Coldean and Moulsecoomb on those days.

Earlier this year, two separate parking consultations were carried out for north and south Hollingdean to measure demand for a resident parking scheme.

With the results not yet published, the council said that, generally, people living south of Hollingbury Place were in favour.

Since September, 2024, Coldean had received 528 visits with 450 penalty charge notices (PCNs) being issued.

In the same period, Moulsecoomb – a larger area – received 528 visits with 715 PCNs being issued.

Twelve of the parking tickets on the north Brighton estates were issued because vehicles were blocking a dropped kerb.

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