ALMOST 300 tickets were handed out to motorists caught parking on double yellow lines along busy Victoria Road last year.

One councillor has called for better enforcement along the Old Town road, while a business owner recommended that parking rules should be relaxed and limited parking bays painted along the road.

The total number of parking tickets handed out along Victoria Road has increased by almost two thirds since 2013/14. Last year, 297 fines were issued.

However, by comparison in just one day earlier this year council wardens slapped 54 tickets on cars parked illegally on a single West Swindon street.

It is understood that the tickets were given to those abandoning their cars on double yellow lines in a bid to grab a bargain at a Neptune Home sale in January. Workers at the Blagrove Industrial Estate branded who reported the parking to the council branded it “chaos”.

At the time the Frankland Road interior design firm promised to pay the £35 fines. The borough council has confirmed that all the tickets had been paid within 15 days.

The council says that their wardens regularly patrol along Victoria Road. However, one councillor for the area has called for greater enforcement of the parking ban.

Councillor Stan Pajak said: “You often see cars parked preventing buses pulling in safely. Without action motorists begin to think it’s the norm and park there continuously without realising the dangers and annoyance they are causing.

“I am wholeheartedly in favour of more enforcement to bring home the point.”

Even Google Street View, the online snapshot of streets taken by the technology multi-national, has picked up cars parked illegally along the street. Since 2012, the Google camera has clocked 17 cars pulled up along just one stretch of road outside the Post Office.

Kevin Burchall, a spokesman for Swindon Borough Council, said that many of those parking illegally along Victoria Road do so for a short time in order to pop-in to shops. And, when they see traffic wardens, they will run out and move their cars.“The only way we would stop this behaviour is to have staff permanently stationed along Victoria Road and we simply do not have the resources to do that,” he said.

“We are able to respond to complaints of illegally parked vehicles as we demonstrated at Blagrove a few months ago, but a situation like that is not something that arises on a regular basis.”

Mark Pepperall, owner of Victoria Road art gallery Oink, said that the answer could be to allow drivers to park along the street.

He said. “There shouldn’t be double yellow lines out there. There is a massive parking problem in Old Town as it is. For retailers like me it’s difficult. There’s an opportunity to have parking bays along here.”