{"id":451959,"date":"2026-03-01T12:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T12:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/451959\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T12:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T12:24:10","slug":"north-berwick-faces-unprecedented-hostility-over-parking-meters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/451959\/","title":{"rendered":"North Berwick faces &#8216;unprecedented&#8217; hostility over parking meters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">North Berwick is the first town in the region to have the parking charges introduced, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cgmnzkvglk8o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">plans for similar schemes in Musselburgh, Haddington, Dunbar and Tranent<\/a> expected to follow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Insp Alan King, of Police Scotland, said the vandalism had caused great expense to the &#8220;public purse&#8221; while councils were &#8220;bearing what are harsh economic times&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">East Lothian Council leader, Councillor Norman Hampshire, said the fees were necessary to regulate parking in a town without attendants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said the only way to introduce staff to stop certain drivers parking on double yellow lines, in front of drop kerbs and on pavements was to bring in income to fund them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He told the BBC those responsible for defacing the machines would have &#8220;action taken against them&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The council budget can&#8217;t afford to employ traffic wardens and the income from the parking charges will allow us to employ them,&#8221; Hampshire said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If people think by vandalising the machines they will stop the parking charges coming in, we will bring them in. We need to do this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;North Berwick is a small town, some people will know who is responsible for the vandalism and Police Scotland are confident they&#8217;ll be able to apprehend the people responsible.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Berwick is the first town in the region to have the parking charges introduced, with plans for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-451959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}