Parking bays in Fleet town centre have been wrongly re-painted for a second time, a campaigner claims.

Hampshire County Council re-marked the Fleet Road bays after a national adjudicator ruled them  unenforceable.

However, Fleet resident Peter Ashford says the markings are still wrong.

“The parking bays are not compliant with traffic signs regulations,” he said. “After Fleet Road was all re-painted incorrectly for the second time by the county council in April, it has staggered from one blunder to another in this third failed attempt to carry out a simple road-marking task.

“They have repeated earlier mistakes, corrected a few, and added new ones. Fleet Road remains a dog’s breakfast of  illegalities.”

Mr Ashford said that when he provided evidence to the council last November that the bays were illegally too narrow his information was dismissed and no action was taken.

“The county council claimed that Fleet Road was so narrow it could disregard the regulation, and insisted that enforcement was legal.

“I reported the statements were nonsense and showed why, but this was disregarded.

“One councillor later announced that the council cannot take advice from any of the district’s thousands of residents. That dreamworld attitude explains why Fleet Road remains a chaotic mess.”

Hart District Council stop-ped enforcing the controv-ersial parking regulations after the National Parking Adjudic-ation Service (NPAS) ruled in March that the bays were not lawful. The ruling came after former Hook resident Stephen Robson was issued a penalty charge notice after parking outside the Captured Moment shop in January last year.

Mr Robson appealed to the NPAS in October, which accepted that his case merited a review, heard in Winchester. The adjudicator concluded that the difference between what is required and what has actually been painted on the carriageway is so great that the bays in Fleet Road cannot be enforced.

Mr Ashford said: “A simple diagram presented [to the tribunal] by myself and copied to the council showed exactly how the bays must be marked and the tribunal confirmed it to be correct.”

Hampshire County Council contractors painted new lines on June 22 at a cost of nearly £7,000. Mr Ashford said the recent re-marking was a “futile operation” that has not corr-ected unenforceable defects in place since April and again has added more new defects.

He added: “All of the Fleet Road bus stops, which for several reasons have always been illegally marked, have now been repainted — at considerable cost — exactly as they were and totally contrary to signage regulations.

“I have now reminded the council that the placement of all the bus and parking notices in Fleet Road is expressly prohibited by law until the associated road markings comply with the traffic signs regulations.

“The non-compliance with regulations in Fleet Road for the last two years means that none of the parking fines has been lawfully issued.

“The county council has privately admitted what Hart Council has known for two years  — that motorists do not understand the misleading parking/loading notices.

“The council’s intention to resume enforcement before adequate parking notices are installed amounts to blatant entrapment, which is also illegal as it has been all along.”

John Elson, Hart District Council’s head of environ-mental maintenance, said: “Having checked the new markings we are satisfied that with the exceptions of the disabled bays the restrictions are now enforceable.”

The council said that warn-ing notices would be issued for vehicles contravening the restrictions from June 25 for two weeks, after which normal enforcement would resume.

However, the works do not address problems with sub-standard disabled bay mark-ings.

Mr Elson added: “We will be unable to enforce these until Hampshire County Council has either amended the Traffic Regulation Order or sought an exemption from the Depart-ment for Transport.”

Replying to Mr Ashford’s claims, Hart District Council chief executive Geoff Bonner said: “The county council advises us that the current markings and signage are enforceable and hence we intend to start enforcing them again.

“I understand there are still one or two minor defects in the markings which will be corrected before enforcement starts.”

Mr Bonner said he had passed Mr Ashford’s letter to Hampshire County Council, which would no doubt let Hart know if it agreed with Mr Ashford’s views.

If it did then the resumption of enforcement would again be put on hold, added Mr Bonner.