Disregard for parking disappointing, Mayor

Hastings District Council will investigate the council car parked across a disabled parking space in Wellington at the weekend.

Hastings District Council yesterday defended a staff member whose apparent haphazard out-of-town parking across two disabled spots was snapped on social media.

But Mayor Lawrence Yule said the incident was not a good look.

Wellington man Maika Bennett posted a shot of the sign-written council car on Twitter on Saturday.

He said he snapped it at the car park of the Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre at 7.30am and the car was still there when he left the centre at 10am.

The unnamed council staff member was "on legitimate business" attending an event at the Aquatic Centre and parked across painted lines because of the way other vehicles were parked around them, a senior council manager said yesterday.

Group manager corporate and customer services Mike Maguire also said the parks in question were not "officially designated" disabled spaces.

"There is no signpost designating the parks as disabled in the photograph and the lines on the pavement are white, not yellow as they would be for official disabled parks," Mr Maguire said.

"The need to park at an angle was due to circumstances at the time the vehicle was parked. This is not apparent in the photograph, as other vehicles that were present at the time the council vehicle parked, are not shown," he said.

But Mr Yule had a different view.

"If it looks like a disabled car park it is a disabled car park," he said.

"My view is that any normal person would think it is a disabled car park and they should not have parked there."

That stance was shared by CCS Disability Action facilities manager B J Clarke.

"If there's an 'accessible' symbol on the ground, that to me is more important than the colour of the lines," Mr Clarke said.

"It comes back to the integrity of the person who parked there ... If they thought they'd park there because the lines were white even though there was a yellow symbol then that's very disappointing."