Brightlingsea has been selected as one of the first towns in the country to trial an innovative scheme designed to prevent parking chaos in its narrow streets.

The Park & Drive initiative will encourage car owners in the lower part of town – where parking spaces are hard to find – to leave their vehicles in a field near All Saints’ Church. From there they will be able to pick up an electric mobility scooter for their journey home.

The free scheme is a joint project developed by the Department of Transport, which has been looking at ways to reduce parking issues on streets lined mainly with terraced houses – such as New Street and Sydney Street – and to improve access for emergency, refuse and delivery vehicles.

Residents in the selected streets will be given a card to release a scooter from it’s charging station. GPS tracking software will allow the scooters to be driven anywhere in Brightlingsea, but will sound an alarm warning users that the scooter’s motor will cut out if it goes past the Park & Drive base on Church Road.

The Park & Drive base will be manned by security staff 24/7, so residents’ cars will be safe. Staff will also have a large stock of umbrellas available to users to protect them from rain, as the buggies have no roofs.

“We think it’s a win-win scheme,” said a Department of Transport spokesperson. “Not only will it make thed problems of trying to find a parking space in narrow streets a thing of the past, but it will reduce noise and cut harmful emissions too.”

However, getting the scheme up and running faces one major hurdle – getting an electricity supply to the field that can cope with charging up to 300 scooters at any one time.

UK Power Networks is hoping that the infrastructure will be in place by April 1, 2027, but warns that the main B1029 road in to Brightlingsea will have to be dug up in order to lay the cables – and that could mean months of disruption for drivers.