Commentary on Sections Section 5 – Enforcement officers
12.Subsection (4BA) of section 21 of the 1970 Act confers on constables, traffic wardens and parking attendants the power to require a person to produce a badge for examination. Section 3 provides an additional power under subsection (4D) to retain a badge produced for examination in certain circumstances (see paragraph 8 of these Notes).
13.Section 5 confers the enforcement powers mentioned in the preceding paragraph on a new class of official, namely a person employed or engaged by a local authority to exercise those powers. Section 5 achieves this by inserting a definition of “enforcement officer” as section 21(8A) of the 1970 Act. Enforcement officer is defined to mean traffic wardens and parking attendants as well as the new class of official. References to “enforcement officer” are then inserted into the relevant subsections of section 21 of the 1970 Act.
14.Constables, traffic wardens and parking attendants will be in uniform when exercising their enforcement powers under section 21 of the 1970 Act. The new class of official which section 5 will create need not be uniformed. To ensure that the public can know that a person not in uniform who is requesting the production of a badge is entitled to make that demand, section 5 inserts a new section 21(4BC) into the 1970 Act. The new subsection provides that it is not an offence to fail to present a badge for examination in response to a request from someone other than a constable, traffic warden or parking attendant, unless the person making the request produces evidence of the person’s authorisation to make it.