A policeman's car lot is not a happy one for the neighbourhood. Increasing congestion on our roads seems to be the order of the day yet our local constabulary turns a blind eye when it suits them

A policeman's car lot is not a happy one for the neighbourhood.Increasing congestion on our roads seems to be the order of the day yet our local constabulary turns a blind eye when it suits them.Many local residents will have noticed the car parking problem in Weatherly Drive, Portishead, and the surrounding minor roads.Today as I went past, there must have been more than 100 cars either parked in the road or on the grass verge, causing not only a physical obstruction on the highways, but obscuring all the important line of sight for negotiating the bend.Large vehicles and buses are having to be extremely careful in threading their way between the traffic island while passengers, mainly older people, are having to work their way between the parked cars to board the bus which cannot pull into at least one of the stops on the drive. Surely this is an accident waiting to happen.Weatherly Drive is a very pleasant road and great care was taken in the planning of the highway to blend in with the new residential developments and the new police HQ. Apparently this has been caused by a change with in-house training, with more police cadets and community officers being trained at Portishead.Surely the police authority can find within their many green acres at Portishead, room to park the cars? Did they not expand the car park a few years ago? The change in procedure did not happen overnight and the need for additional parking must have been anticipated.It was reported in the press last week that the Avon and Somerset Police had underspent their budget by £3 million for the year 2005-2006 and that Dr Moira Hamblin, the Avon and Somerset Police Authority chairman, was looking at ways to spend the money which would ensure local police officers would be able to spend more time in the frontline in communities. This is to be welcomed.For the people who live on or adjacent to Weatherley Drive, the frontline is the car parking problem caused by the police themselves.Could not a small part of the underspend be used to deal with this problem?Clive Hall - Seaview Road, Portishead