DfT Confirms New Powers to Let English Councils Ban Pavement Parking

• The Department for Transport has confirmed that English councils are getting new legal powers to ban pavement parking area-wide, rather than street by street as under the current system.
• The power comes from the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026 and already lets the Secretary of State draw up the detailed rules councils will use.
• Councils cannot issue a ticket for pavement parking under this new power yet: ministers still have to write and pass the secondary regulations that switch it on, with guidance for councils promised later in 2026.

DfT Confirms New Powers to Let English Councils Ban Pavement Parking

Outside London, there has never been a general law against parking on the pavement. What exists instead is a patchwork: a council can ban it on a specific road, but only after going through a formal Traffic Regulation Order for that street, complete with signs, consultation and cost. Do that for every problem street in a large town and the process alone can take years, which is one reason so many pavements across England still have cars parked half on and half off the kerb.

The government’s answer, set out in a press release from the Department for Transport on 8 January 2026, is to let councils act area-wide instead of street by street. Local Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood said the change would let local authorities “crack down on problem pavement parking, allowing more people to travel easily and safely and get to where they need to go.” The legal mechanism for that promise, Schedule 32 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, reached the statute book when the Act received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026.

Read the small print, and the reality is more careful than “pavement parking is banned.” Schedule 32 gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations that, in turn, give each English local transport authority the power to impose a parking prohibition on footways and verges in its area. Those regulations, referred to in the Act as “parking regulations,” have to go through the affirmative procedure in Parliament before they exist. As of the end of September 2026, they have not been made. The clause is in force in the sense that ministers can now start that process; it is not in force in the sense that any council can write out a ticket today under this specific power.

Who This Actually Hits

Once the regulations are made, the practical target is the driver who parks with two wheels on the kerb on a residential street, a habit millions of UK drivers rely on to keep a narrow road passable for other traffic. The government’s own case for the change is built around people the current gap in the law affects most: parents pushing a buggy into the road to get around a parked car, wheelchair users who cannot pass at all, and blind or partially sighted people who lose the tactile line of the kerb edge that guides them safely along a pavement.

Guide Dogs chief executive Andrew Lennox put it plainly in the DfT’s own release: “Cars blocking pavements are a nuisance for everyone, but especially dangerous for people with sight loss, who can be forced into the road with traffic they can’t see.” The RAC’s Rod Dennis struck a more conditional note on behalf of drivers, saying research shows “a clear majority of drivers agree that no pavement user should be made to walk or wheel into the road because of someone else’s inconsiderate parking,” while adding that any new rules should still let drivers partially use a pavement where doing so keeps traffic flowing without causing anyone a problem.

That tension between the two positions is exactly what the coming regulations have to settle. Rather than a blanket England-wide ban, which is what the original 2020 public consultation on this issue found most individual respondents actually wanted, ministers have chosen to let each council decide where a prohibition applies, and to write in exemptions for streets where partial pavement parking causes no real problem. In effect, whether your street ends up covered depends far more on your own council’s decision than on national law.

How Enforcement Will Work Once the Regulations Exist

The Act also makes a smaller but telling change: it amends the Traffic Management Act 2004 so that, outside London, a vehicle parked in breach of one of these new area-wide prohibitions counts as a parking contravention for civil enforcement purposes. In practice, that means councils will not need new criminal powers or police involvement to act. They will use the same civil parking teams, the same penalty charge notice process, and the same appeals route through the independent Traffic Penalty Tribunal that already deals with millions of ordinary parking tickets every year.

London already runs a version of this system. Pavement parking has been banned there by default from 1974 onward, enforced with the same penalty charge notices used for every other parking contravention in the capital, with individual boroughs able to grant exceptions on specific streets. The DfT’s own reasoning for the new English-wide power draws heavily on that decades-old London precedent: give councils a general power, let them apply exemptions locally, and enforce it through the civil system that already exists rather than building something new from scratch.

What Happens Between Now and Enforcement

Three things have to happen in order before a council anywhere outside London can hand out its first pavement parking ticket under this power. Parliament has to approve the detailed regulations, which the government has not yet laid and which need an affirmative vote in both Houses. The Department for Transport has to publish guidance telling councils how to use the power proportionately, something it has promised for later in 2026 but not pinned to a firm date. Then each council that wants to use the power has to decide which streets to cover, consult locally where it chooses to, and put up whatever signage the eventual regulations require.

That sequence is why road safety and access campaigners, including Guide Dogs, are already pushing for the regulations and guidance to move quickly rather than drift, given how long the previous consultation process took to reach even this point. The original public consultation on pavement parking closed years earlier; the government’s own response, ruling out a blanket ban in favour of this local approach, was not published until January 2026.

What Drivers Should Do Now

For most drivers, nothing changes immediately. There is no new fixed penalty in force this week, and no council can yet point to this specific power as the reason for a ticket on your windscreen. What has changed is the direction of travel: the legal machinery for area-wide pavement parking bans now exists, ministers have said publicly they intend to use it, and councils across England, including authorities such as Brighton & Hove that have already welcomed the announcement, are preparing for the day the regulations land.

The practical advice in the meantime has not changed. Existing rules under the Highway Code already discourage parking in a way that blocks or obstructs a pavement, and a council can still use an ordinary Traffic Regulation Order to ban parking on a specific problem street today, without waiting for the wider power. Anyone who habitually leaves two wheels on the kerb on a narrow residential road should expect that, on that specific street at least, the argument for doing so is about to get considerably harder to make once their council gets the tool to say no outright.

Sources

Department for Transport, “New local powers to keep pavements clear for those who rely on them most”, press release, published 8 January 2026, gov.uk
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, Schedule 32, legislation.gov.uk