TRAFFIC warden replacements take to the streets of East Lothian next Monday (November 7), but they will only be able to issue dummy tickets for the first month of their new beat.

East Lothian Council has confirmed the new private parking attendants will appear across the county in under a fortnight as they prepare to start a crackdown on illegal parking.

However, they do not expect the powers they need to issue fines to be approved until December 16, meaning the new team of wardens will not be able to take any real action for the first few weeks.

Instead, they will issue warning leaflets and dummy tickets to motorists they catch breaking parking rules.

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Speaking to a meeting of East Lothian Council this week, Ray Montgomery, head of infrastructure, said: “Parking attendants will be deployed on streets within East Lothian in the week commencing November 7 and will serve warning flyers for evident infringements for a period of two weeks.

“This will be escalated to working notices without penalty for a minimum of two weeks until the orders have been made.”

Despite initial plans to employ the new traffic wardens themselves, East Lothian Council has opted to bring in Edinburgh’s ‘Blue Meanies’ operators NSL Ltd on a five-year contract to provide four parking attendants and one supervisor to oversee the new system.

The council is awaiting Scottish Government approval of its plans to deregulate parking legislation so it can introduce £60 penalty notices across the county.

This will, they hope, mean an end to free-for-all parking in town centres and drivers ignoring charges at coastal car parks.

Speaking about the plans, Councillor Michael Veitch said he had heard about two troubling incidents caused by illegal parking.

He said: “Just this week I heard about a bus stuck in North Berwick with passengers, and cars parked illegally all along a street outside a police station.”

Police Scotland scrapped its traffic wardens in February 2014, leaving local authorities with the option to take over responsibility for policing the streets themselves.

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Mr Montgomery said that the new attendants would operate seven days a week and he reassured councillors who raised concerns about ‘bonus systems’ encouraging the wardens to issue more tickets.

He said: “There is not any kind of bonus system in place, they are paid a wage with no incentives.”