Pavement parking

London — prohibited, and has been since 1974

It is an offence to cause or permit a vehicle to be parked in Greater London with one or more wheels on or over any part of a road other than the carriageway, or on a footpath.

This has been the law across Greater London since 1974 — it is not new, and it is not a borough-by-borough scheme.

The exceptions:

• With the permission of a constable in uniform.
• To save life, put out a fire or meet another emergency.
• To help at the scene of an accident or a genuine breakdown.
• To load or unload goods, for a limited period unless the council allows longer.

The loading exception is the one with a clock on it: 20 minutes, unless the council allows longer.

Fire, police and ambulance vehicles, street cleansing and refuse vehicles, gritting and snow clearance, and statutory undertakers’ vehicles are exempt.

Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1974, section 15

Scotland — prohibited, and enforced since 11 December 2023

A vehicle must not be parked with any wheel, or any part of a wheel, on any part of a pavement. Two further prohibitions came in at the same time: double parking, and parking at a dropped footway.

Double parking is defined by distance rather than by judgement: the vehicle must have some part of it within a set distance of the edge of the carriageway. That distance is 50 centimetres — the same figure England uses inside a special enforcement area.

The penalty charge is £100, reduced to £50 if it is paid within 14 days.

A street can be exempted, but not casually. A council may exempt a particular street, but only where the pavement would still leave a minimum clear width with vehicles parked on it, or where the road layout would otherwise block emergency vehicles. An exempted street must be signed. The minimum clear width is 1.5 metres.

Exceptions: Emergency services, road works and waste collection, a doctor responding to an urgent case, short deliveries, authorised parking places, and saving life.

Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, Part 6

England outside London — not prohibited

Outside London there is no general prohibition on parking on the pavement in England. The police can act where a vehicle causes an unnecessary obstruction, and a council can enforce a signed restriction, but there is no offence of pavement parking as such.

What changed on 8 January 2026

The Department for Transport consulted on this in 2020 and published its response on 8 January 2026.

The government did not introduce a national ban. It said it will instead enable local transport authorities to prohibit pavement parking across their own areas at the next legislative opportunity, which requires primary legislation and a regulatory framework after it.

In the meantime it will create a civil enforcement power over unnecessary obstruction of the pavement by secondary legislation, so that councils with civil enforcement powers can issue penalty charge notices for it. That power needs no new signage.

No commencement date has been given for either step. Until one is, nothing about the law where you parked has changed. If you have read that pavement parking is about to be banned across England, that is not what was decided. The decision was to let each local transport authority ban it in its own area, once the legislation exists to let them.

Wales — not prohibited

Wales has no specific pavement parking offence either.

The Welsh Government accepted its taskforce’s recommendation to give councils enforcement powers rather than impose a national ban, by adding unnecessary obstruction of the highway to the list of civil contraventions in Schedule 7 to the Traffic Management Act 2004.

That response was published on 28 March 2023 and targeted autumn 2023. We have not been able to confirm that the regulations have been made, so we do not state that the power is in force.

One rule that applies everywhere in Great Britain

One pavement rule applies across Great Britain regardless of any of the above: parking a heavy commercial vehicle wholly or partly on a footway, a verge or a central reservation is a criminal offence.

Defences: Permission from a constable in uniform, an emergency, or loading and unloading that could not be done otherwise with the vehicle never left unattended.

The section carries an exclusion tied to the civil enforcement regime introduced by the Road Traffic Act 1991, so where civil parking enforcement operates the same conduct is dealt with as a council contravention rather than as this offence.

Road Traffic Act 1988, section 19