Council-run staff are to take over from police-run traffic wardens but there may a period of reduced responsibility during the changeover when couldn't-care-less drivers will park where they please.

At the moment on-street parking enforcement is the responsibility of the police and off-street (car parks) the responsibility of West Norfolk Council.

In preparation for the handover of power – not likely to take place until the autumn – the police are not replacing traffic wardens as they leave. That means that there are now only three traffic wardens left for the whole of the West Norfolk Council area – the towns of Lynn, Hunstanton and Downham and all rural areas in between.

Being so thin on the ground, they can only concentrate on parking which causes an obstruction, congestion and a danger to other road users. Some areas are already free-for-all zones.

Unlike the police the council will retain any revenue generated (from parking fines) when it takes charge of on-street parking.

To an extent (and the pictures above support this argument) this will make sense. The council will have a vested interest in ensuring drivers comply with the rules, and by complying (using the properly- provided pay-to-park areas) will contribute to council finances.

So once the council takes on full responsibility and new revenue opportunities become available to it, enforcement of illegal parking should once again be on the up.

In the meantime, as these pictures demonstrate, drivers who appear to have spent so much time behind the wheel that they have lost the use of their legs will continue to park as close to their destination as possible, even if it means stopping on a yellow line.


Just in case you thought I'd forgotten, here's an update on the Shut That Door campaign*. Body Shop HQ reports that it still plans to shut the doors in Lynn and is having meetings and talks and moving towards the great day of commonsense. And they've promised we'll be the first to be told the date of the day of closure.

*Shut That Door campaign: During cold weather shops with heating keep their doors closed, preventing waste of valuable energy.


Fed-up queueing at the new post office inside Smiths in Lynn during your lunch hour. So is this letter writer:

You sometime ask readers to let you know what gets their goat. Here's my latest one – the appalling "service" (and I use the word with caution) at Lynn's new post office, stuck away at the back of the WH Smith store in Norfolk Street.

Once again I have wasted a fair chunk of my lunch break waiting to be served in there. Today just out of interest I decided to time things.
It took 17 minutes from the time I joined the queue to getting served. When I joined the queue I counted 16 people in it and within a few minutes it has risen to 23.

It can't be my imagination as I cannot remember waiting that long at our original post office, which seemed to have more people on duty in the old days.

The only places where there wasn't a queue were at two windows labelled Travel Services. OK, after a while, the staff at these windows did start to serve us mere mortals.

There were four people at the normal counters, but only three serving. The other had possibly finished a stint or was cashing up.

"Entertainment" for the waiting throng was provided on two screens showing a slightly silly Post Office promotional film where a poster keeps falling down. It would have been better to show the lunchtime news – unless they can't afford a TV licence.

Many of the other people in the queue were moaning about the delays.
As I left, a man entered the front of the store and asked an assistant where the post box was.

He was told it was at the post office at the back – as if everyone is supposed to know.

It would have made sense to have a post box at both the back and the front of the store, to save people having to get past all the other people in there just to buy books and gifts.

It's not a lot to ask for, especially now the post office has closed the collection box at the disused Baxters Plain building.

I shall try to avoid using the post office in future – I hate to think what it's like on pension days and car tax renewal times.

I will buy my stamps at the various outlets which now sell them. Sadly, on this occasion I had to use the post office as I had a small parcel to send.

Name and address supplied.


Purfleet says: For stamps I always use Clintons Cards, where the staff are cheery and quick. But I have noticed that stamps are now available at more shops, including Wilkinsons and Superdrug. But if you are an ordinary punter and have a parcel to send. the post office, with its queues and dawdling service, has the monopoly.