Is it illegal for drivers to drive/park in cycle lanes?

I emailed boris to ask why the south side pavement of Mile End road, which is about 5 metres wide for a lot of the length, didn't have the cycle lane painted onto it rather than the more dangerous road.

Got a slightly defensive reply from someone at tfl talking about segregated cycle paths and how they were installing them where they could, nothing to do with my original question.

Now, why the hell do you paint a blue line on the road when it's still legal to drive and park in them. Why paint a cycle path that's only 2 metres long on a back street? God this is tedious.

Yeah, I see this sort of idiocy all the time. On Seven Sisters road therehas been some resurfacing done between Amhurst Park and St Anns Road, and there is a short stretch where there's no bus lane. in this section there is a lot of zig-zag 'no parking' lines, and then where that isn't there, there's a dashed line which look suspiciously like it's going to be a cycle lane. Now I'm not a fan of cycle lanes being all over the place but on major routes it is useful - IF they're solid lined or otherwise fully segregated lanes. But a dashed lane doesn't actually prohibit drivers from entering, so is worse than useless, because it reinforces the idea that cyclists should ride in the gutter, but provides no refuge whatsoever from reckless drivers, and has no legal or regulatory weight to do so as far as I can tell -whereas at least a solid line is technically not meant to be crossed.