The scourge of 'dangerous and unsafe' parking in Sheffield - and what is being done to tackle it

Unsafe parking on pavements, which forces pedestrians into the road, is an issue which is often raised by Sheffield residents, so much so that Star readers have cited it as one of their key crime concerns in the city, along with knife crime, drug dealing, burglaries and city centre begging and anti-social behaviour.

Superintentent Benn Kemp of South Yorkshire Police acknowledged that parking 'remains a challenge' for the force, and has outlined exactly what South Yorkshire Police is doing to crack down on those responsible.

He said: “I appreciate as a resident, dangerous and unsafe parking is a concern. One: it's very inconvenient, but secondly, it presents a danger to pedestrians who are having to cross the road in awkward positions, and things like that.

“Now, in the North West of Sheffield, we've trialled an initiative called operation Park Safe, which sees members of the public being able to report unsafe parking through a specific app and which then directly results in a prosecution for the driver utilising public evidence. It's a really innovative initiative, and we currently doing some sort of analysis to identify whether or not that would be suitable to be expanded to other areas of the city on the sort of a scaling basis, because we do know that parking remains a challenge for us and so there's some of this sort of things we do in respect of these issues."

Supt Kemp said the force is also working to tackle problems arising from 'off-road biking' through a dedicated team.

He explained: "They target areas where we get reports of off-road biking. We review all of the intelligence relating to off-road biking, when member of the public goes online and fills in a report and says I saw a bike with some specific details. We do follow that. We work really closely with housing, where people are storing off road bags in their premises, to really target these people; because we do understand the blight that off-road biking can have to a community and the the green spaces around often residential areas.”