Garsington's dumped cars and parking enforcement problem

 Cars, apparently associated with Greenwoods scrap yard (GREENWOODS OF GARSINGTON LIMITED; Company number 08684758; registered office address 5 Orchard Road, Cumnor, Oxford OX2 9BL) are parked along Pettiwell in Garsington.  From memory, this situation has persisted for over 5 years with little to no effective enforcement.

I write this article from a position of relative ignorance, having observed the problems and lack of enforcement over the years.  I don't know the history of enforcement attempts.

Today, there were around a dozen abandoned vehicles on Pettiwell.  Most are on double yellow lines.  One appears to be on a farmer's land.  Several have notices of various types and vintages attached.  Some are falling apart; some are jacked up.  In all cases, there is a basic lack of enforcement.

According to an Oxford Mail article from over a year ago [1], some of the vehicles are abandoned without Greenwood's permission.  In such cases, each vehicle will have a registered owner.  The same article said Greenwood's had been ordered to remove the vehicles.  It's not clear whether Greenwood's owns any of the problem vehicles, but anyone can query the DVLA registration data to help establish this.

[1] <https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18868621.police-act-garsington-parking-nightmare-caused-dumped-cars/>

The vehicles are traffic hazards, directly and through unusual road wear.  They also pollute the land.  They have caused at least one accident.  The negative effects do not in any case need to be rehearsed: any failure to enforce parking restrictions, against the will of a local community, is a failure of government at at least one level.

In the final analysis, the community has decided to tolerate the situation. 

I don't exactly know the solution, but how about publicly documenting attempts to fix it, for a start.

Each vehicle should be treated as a separate case.  For each case, the registration number could be recorded, and the registered owner established offline.  In case the registered owner is a company, the company's identity can then be published.  Where it's a private individual, probably not.  The case should be reported to the relevant traffic authority, and its enforcement performance publicly tracked.  In parallel, a resident may as well demand compensation from, and then file a case in the small claims track of the Country Court against, the vehicle's registered owner and / or Greenwood's.  In cases where the vehicle is causing issues beyond a parking violation (safety, pollution, ..), additional enforcements with tracking can be raised with the relevant authority for each issue.

Some questions which come to mind are (i) is a Parish Council a legal entity, capable of being a party to legal action; (ii) who is the relevant traffic authority currently? (Oxfordshire County Council?).

A friend mentioned there was a scheme where reporters of parking violations get a cut, 10 GBP or so, for each case they report.  Something to do with an app.  I've not looked into this yet.

I found a fixmystreet entry from 2016, so over 5 years ago, at [2].  Guess whether its status is marked as "closed" or not.  Ready?  Answer: its status is marked as "closed".

[2] <https://fixmystreet.oxfordshire.gov.uk/report/946350>

It says stuff like:

Parked vehicles on road, visiting Greenwoods of Garsington.

Reported anonymously at 15:07, Thu 22 December 2016

Sent to Oxfordshire County Council and South Oxfordshire District Council 3 minutes later

Parked vehicles along one side of Pettiwell, when visiting Greenwoods of Garsington. Sometimes the vehicles stretch for over 100 metres. The problem is when a car is coming in the opposite direction and you have nowhere to pull in. The road is not wide enough for this amount of parking and the volume of parked vehicles at times appears to be getting worse.

Council ref: 946350

Updates

• The installation of formal waiting restrictions (yellow lines) requires the implementation of a Traffic Regulation Order, this involves a long and expensive legal process including full consultation, I regret that Oxfordshire County Council would not be able to fund such a scheme at this time, we have however recently provided Garsington Parish Council with a quotation for the works should they wish to fund them.

  Posted by Oxfordshire County Council at 07:56, Fri 23 December 2016

• Parked cars causing wider vehicles to drive into the verges and embankments cause soil to be spread across the road. This makes the surface slippery in wet conditions.

  It is also causing the egde of the road to be broken up and create larger pot holes to form and poor visability for passing cars.

  Surely it's cheaper and more importantly safer to fix the root cause of the potholes rather than just keep filling in pot holes. The repairs appear to be temporary repairs and rarely get permanently repaired in a timely manner.

  Posted anonymously at 00:37, Wed 4 January 2017

• Updated by Oxfordshire County Council at 12:41, Fri 6 October 2017

• State changed to: Investigation complete

  Updated by Oxfordshire County Council at 13:29, Fri 6 October 2017

• Car still parking everywhere. The parking restrictions are not being policed and enforced

  Posted anonymously at 08:30, Sat 7 October 2017

This report is now closed to updates. You can make a new report in the same location.