No. Under NSW Road Rule 197 it is illegal to park on the grass verge in a built-up area — even directly outside your own home, even where there is no footpath to block. The fine is $339. Your council did not write the rule; the State did, so it is the same on every street in NSW.
There is a petition before the NSW Parliament asking for a common-sense fix. Any NSW resident can sign it, and it takes about thirty seconds.
Rule 197 of the Road Rules 2014 makes it an offence to stop on a nature strip or footpath in a built-up area. It applies whether or not there is a kerb, whether or not there is a footpath, and whether or not the verge is outside your own house. Councils issue the fines, but the rule itself belongs to the State — a council cannot simply vote it away.
You cannot stop or park “on footpaths and nature strips, unless a sign says you can.”
The rule was written for streets with kerbs, footpaths and off-street parking. On narrow estate streets and kerbless village streets — where the verge is often the only safe place to put a car — it forces vehicles onto carriageways too narrow to share, or fines the household that has nowhere else to go.
Rule 197 begins with its own exception: the offence only applies “unless the driver stops at a place on a length of road, or in an area, to which a permissive parking sign applies.” But there's a catch buried in rule 334(2): a standard kerbside parking sign covers the road and its shoulder — not the nature strip — unless the sign itself says otherwise. And NSW has never put a verge-capable sign in its signs register. The exception exists on paper; there is no sign in the state that can actually use it.
Queensland built that sign years ago — its traffic sign manual includes an “ON VERGE” panel telling drivers to park partly on the verge, used on streets where that is the sensible thing to do. So the ask is not radical or expensive: create the sign NSW forgot, or use section 19 of the Road Transport Act — which already lets the Minister switch a rule off for specified places by a simple published order. One signature. No new legislation.
That is what the petition asks for. Meanwhile a household on a six-metre-wide street, with no kerb and no footpath, pays $339.
This is not a radical idea. Under the same national model road rules, councils in other states permit it outright, or enforce with warnings and common sense. NSW is the outlier, not the pioneer.
Residents and their visitors may park on the verge adjoining a property with the occupier's consent — written into the city's Parking Local Law 2023 (cl 3.3).
Same model: verge parking adjoining your own property is lawful under the Parking Local Law 2014 (cl 6.10).
Published graduated enforcement: a caution and a fact sheet for a first offence; fines kept for repeat or unsafe parking.
Local law permits sign-designated verge parking — public consultation ran about 85% in favour.
A NSW council with an adopted enforcement policy built on risk-based ranger discretion — proof discretion is lawful here too.
Councillors voted unanimously in 2022 to seek an exemption from Rule 197 for its villages — and got nowhere. Which is why this now goes to Parliament.
The nature strip is part of the road reserve, vested in your council as the roads authority under the Roads Act 1993. Residents mow it out of custom and pride — there is no law that says you must. You cannot even landscape it without council's consent (s 138). And yet the household that mows it is the one that gets fined for parking on it.
Nature strips between a residential boundary and a local road are “the legal responsibility of the council of that area in its capacity as the roads authority under the Roads Act 1993.”
That is the quiet double standard at the heart of this: the land is council's when a fine is written, and yours when the grass needs cutting. The petition asks Parliament to settle both halves honestly.
From 1 July 2025, NSW abolished “ticketless” parking fines — officers must leave a notice on the vehicle, and councils must publish quarterly reports on the parking fines they issue. In the first year after the reform, Rule 197 fines across the state fell by roughly a quarter, from 34,076 to 26,023 (Revenue NSW penalty notice data).
That reform fixed how the fines are issued. It did not touch what is fined: parking on the verge of a kerbless street, blocking no one, is exactly as illegal today as before. That last step is what the petition asks Parliament to take.
The petition asks the Legislative Assembly to amend the Road Rules, or direct Transport for NSW, to permit parking on the grass verge of kerbless village streets where it does not obstruct a footpath or endanger road users — and to confirm that maintaining the verge is the roads authority's responsibility. A narrow, reasonable ask; nobody is proposing parking on footpaths in town.
You need to be a NSW resident with an email address — that's it. You do not need to live in Cessnock; the rule is the same on your street as ours.
Sign online nowAt 500 signatures, a NSW Minister is required to respond in writing within 35 days. The response is published, and emailed to every person who signed.
Help reach itAt 20,000, the petition is debated on the floor of the Legislative Assembly. Every extra suburb and village that signs moves it closer.
Share it with your streetNot from around here? Same rule, your town. If verge fines are biting in your street and you'd like paper petition sheets or a hand getting started, email contact@bettercessnock.org — we'll share everything we have. And if you want to see how we're running the local side of this, the full Cessnock campaign is here.