Selwyn councillors are questioning parking enforcement after reports that vehicles parked slightly on berms or awaiting warrants at garages have been ticketed.

The new council is having a series of briefings in what Mayor Lydia Gliddon called deep dives into council business to “strengthen our foundations and our knowledge of what is happening”.

They started with development and growth, and one area of focus of councillor questions was parking enforcement.

New head of regulatory Jacquie Muir told the councillors parking is monitored, with one FTE officer role, to “ensure fair and equitable use of our time-restricted parking areas”.

“We are supporting safe roads and preventing harm from cars that are illegally parked, not warranted, not registered, and also making sure that we're maintaining our infrastructure in terms of not damaging our berms.”

Councillor John Verry pointed to issues with the width of the roads in some subdivisions which, when cars park on the road it “reduces it to single lane”.

“Some people think they're doing a favour by enabling the flow of traffic by slightly parking on the berm, and then they find out that that's an expensive mistake,” Verry said.

Muir said she couldn’t comment on the width of the roads but accepted Verry’s point, “around practicality versus aesthetics and damage to the berms”.

“That's something that we will be looking at in terms of using discretion when we can and when we can't, going forward.”

Cr Samuel Wilshire had asked “what the incentive was” for the council issuing tickets for Rego and WOF.

Muir explained that since the 1960s, local government has had “warranted powers to contribute to road safety through making sure that cars were legally warranted, fit and proper for use on our roads.”

Cr Aaron McGlinchy said he had “heard anecdotally” from staff at a Lincoln garage that customer vehicles parked on the roadside awaiting warrant checks had been ticketed.

McGlinchy suggested a more proactive approach to go and talk to the garage “rather than piss everybody off”.

Mayor Gliddon said she hoped those people had used the appeal process through the council for that incident.

Development and growth acting executive director Emma Larsen said the council was aware of tickets being issued on a road near a garage but “none of them would have been reasonably expected to be cars from the garage”.

The incidents the councillors raised reflect a perception in the community that the officers have been targeting residential areas, rather than patrolling the parking areas.

Larsen said the council introduced parking enforcement in 2022 in response to an increase in parking-related complaints and safety concerns across the district.

“The majority of complaints that we receive from the public are about parking in residential areas, and for the majority of these, we issue warnings, not tickets.

“While officers may exercise discretion in certain situations, they also issue infringement offence notices where necessary to encourage responsible and safe parking behaviour.”

From January 1 to the end of October, the council had issued 2,553 infringement notices, compared to 1,688 for the same period in 2024.

Of those, 193 were for incorrect kerb parking, down from 246 in 2024, and for parking on grass berm or verge, there were 367 infringements, down from 553 last year.

Larsen said that parking on berms “can damage infrastructure, which costs ratepayers to repair”.

“It can also obstruct pedestrian access and compacts the berms which reduces their effectiveness in soaking up stormwater runoff.”

By Jonathan Leask