Continuing our A Day in My Life series, Gareth Davies, Parking Services team leader, Ceredigion’s Civil Parking Enforcement Team, takes us through what his job entails.

I STARTED off as a civil parking enforcement officer and was a bit apprehensive at first, fearing that the way the role is portrayed on the television would be a true reflection of reality but thankfully, after being successful in being offered the job and beginning in my new role, I soon found out that it’s nowhere near my actual day to day job.

During the first few months in my new role I met a lot of people being very positive and supportive towards me as many residents of Ceredigion could still recall a period when there were no parking service officers on duty in the county and the chaos that it caused.

I was very lucky to have a great support team around me from Katy, Alun and Gerwyn in the office or out and about with Nicola who spent a lot of time at the start training me thankfully!

The main aim of the role is to help maintain the free flow of traffic and encourage compliance with parking restrictions.

Being compliant with parking restrictions really does play an important part in maintaining road safety for drivers as well as pedestrians.

The job has its difficult moments but also has its good moments where you feel that you are really making a difference.

It has its funny moments too – I was once chased up Marine Terrace by a Dalek threatening to exterminate me if I booked his spaceship.

Thankfully they moved on before I had to issue a Penalty Charge Notice (PCNs)!

The job is varied. I can spend a lot of time during the summer providing information to the large volume of visitors who come to Ceredigion for their summer holidays; I’m more than happy to help them and I’ve learnt a lot about Ceredigion myself this way.

We’re lucky to have a county that boasts of beautiful scenery, both inland and coastal areas.

After three years in this role, a position became available as a parking services team leader and thankfully, I was successful in securing the role.

The new role requires me, along with two of my colleagues, to manage the other civil enforcement officers, car parks and deal with an extensive list of duties including enquiries, complaints, season tickets and waivers.

Did you know that you can now apply for car park season tickets online? As well as the convenience of not having to carry money for the machines, if you use our car parks regularly, you could save up to 79 per cent on the cost of daily parking by buying a season ticket.

My job is varied and fast-paced which requires the ability to adapt to different issues that can arise across the county.

Ceredigion contains lots of very different areas to each other and this means that the service has to be adaptable and flexible where possible.

We cover the entire county and over the summer our work load increases considerably.

We are a small team who have a large area to cover, so bear with us.

We operate under the Caru Ceredigion principal and are led by education not enforcement.

See this week’s south papers for the full feature, available in shops and as a digital edition now