A nail-biting game of cat and mouse with traffic wardens - Susan Dalgety

I am all for parking restrictions in the city centre. Edinburgh was not built for cars. The streets are too narrow, the population too dense to cope with modern traffic, so there needs to be careful management of where people park their vehicles.

Parking attendants enforcing the pavement parking ban in Edinburgh

But there also needs to be a balance struck between stopping careless parking and preventing people from going about their daily business. A few days ago, I had a new dishwasher installed. The job only took about 15 minutes, but throughout it all, one of the two-man team stayed outside, on the lookout for traffic wardens because they had no option but to park their company van partly on the pavement outside our tenement block. There was literally nowhere else for them to go.

“Does the company pay your parking tickets if you are fined?” I asked. “No, we have to cough up ourselves,” replied the look-out.

On this occasion, luck was on their side. They managed to fit my dishwasher without incurring a £100 fine – the new charge levied by the city council to stop inconsiderate parking. But even if they had been able to find an empty spot close enough to our flat, they would still have risked a fine as every parking space within walking distance is for permit holders only.

So I have a simple question for the city’s transport chief, Councillor Scott Arthur. How are installation teams, construction workers and other essential services supposed to operate in the city centre if they are not allowed to park? I know that Councillor Arthur is an evangelical cyclist, but not even he could deliver a dishwasher on the back of his bike.

The current permit scheme is only open to Edinburgh based businesses – and my delivery guys were from outside the city. And at £1,500 a year for a permit, how many small business on tight margins can afford one, even if they were lucky enough to find a free parking space?

Living in the heart of Edinburgh has considerable advantages, not least being able to walk to everything the city centre has to offer. But getting a dishwasher installed is a nail-biting game of cat and mouse with traffic wardens.