According to residents, traffic wardens have been instructed not to issue tickets in streets overloaded with illegally parked cars.

And in the centre and on the outskirts of town, school pupils and their parents are clogging car parks and verges with vehicles.

At a town council meeting on Monday, Councillor Peter Matthews said out-of-control parking was 'a Berkhamsted-wide problem'.

He said: "Personally I have a big problem with parking enforcement in Berkhamsted.

"I would like to suggest that we need to make representations to traffic wardens that they do their job."

Residents of George Street at the meeting told councillors they believed traffic wardens patrolling their road had been instructed not to issue tickets to dozens of cars parked illegally on the pavement.

The residents said that up to 50 cars were being parked illegally during week days and that commuters were the likely owners.

In response, chairman Ron Cowie said: "It's a problem of enforcement. The police would need a lot more resources and a lot more people."

He added: "Most of (those parked illegally] are in London."

The council committee also discussed a similar problem in Murray Road.

Cllr Cowie said: "Berkhamsted is a commuter town.

"We do not know what we can do about this."

In the town centre, councillors said parking spaces behind Tesco were being snaffled by pupils from Berkhamsted Collegiate School.

Cllr Cowie said pleas to the school to discourage its students from using the Water Lane car park had not worked.

Cllr Julie Laws said she thought it was unfair to single out the Collegiate pupils.

She said: "I really do not think we can continue to target a group of people."

Cllr Matthews however, claimed the Collegiate School was also to blame for another parking problem in Chesham Road - parents of sports teams use a grass verge along the road to park narrowing the way for passing traffic.

Headteacher of Berkhamsted Collegiate School, Dr Priscilla Chadwick, said: "Up to 25 per cent of our pupils use designated school buses and the vast majority of others use public transport or share cars to school.

"In relation to the Water Lane car park, any motorist is entitled to park and pay the appropriate parking fee."

She added: "I remind parents to park only on the playing fields side of Chesham Road."

In July last year, The Gazette reported that motorists in affluent Berkhamsted were the worst in Dacorum for not paying to park.

Although Hemel Hempstead has a population of 81,143, around four times greater than Berkhamsted, a total of 11,249 Hemel drivers had fallen foul of parking regulations compared with a staggering 6,583 in Berkhamsted.

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