Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Ending of Daily Visitor Permits to increase daily visitor parking charge by 164%
A parking review consultation run quietly at the start of the year seems to have been so little publicised that it attracted just 42 responses (augmented with another 58 garnered by phone).
The change it included that residents may feel most keenly is the abolition of daily visitor permits.
Currently Haringey's website gives the following prices for visitor permits:
Standard daily visitor permits are £5 and hourly are £1.20.
The "Parking Strategy and Policy/Charges Review, Appendix D: Updated parking permit policy / charges" shares the expectation that residents will henceforth be expected to make up a day's parking permit with hourly permits. For the Ladder where the CPZ runs from 08:00 to 18:30, this will require eleven hourly permits to make up a full day. If the hourly charge remains at £1.20, this will mean a total daily cost of £13.20, an increase of a mere 164%. The cutting below is extracted from that Appendix.
It's not clear to me why hourly permits should be less open to abuse than daily ones, but I'm all ears. If the primary motivation for this change was indeed to counter permit abuse, one would have thought it a fairly easy matter to protect residents from the affects of standing up to the abuse by simply putting a cap on daily charges like London Transport do. As far as I can make out, this hasn't happened.
At section 4.1 of the background papers (attached below), the Council has gone to the trouble of benchmarking the cost of daily business visitor permits. That's helpful. They looked at Camden, Islington, Ealing, Greenwich and Waltham Forest.
For some reason, no benchmarking was done on the cost of daily resident visitor parking costs. I've done my best to fill that gap. I've used the same boroughs and added Hackney since that was a missing neighbouring borough.
The current cost for a visitor to park in CPZ of those six boroughs for a day are as follows.
Camden: £8.79
Islington: £7.20 - £8.00 (on my calculationat £0.90 and £1.00 per hour)) discounted to £2.80 for 60+
Greenwich: Tradesmen £18.50 per week, and £9 per 10 vouchers (no information on time period validity)
Waltham Forest: £8.00 (at £1.00 per hour)
Hackney: £5.30.......................
...................vs Haringey: £13.20
....unless of course I'm misunderstanding Haringey's policy - only too happy to be set straight.
The change was part of a wider Parking strategy review that was passed by the Council last week. The recommendations of the review were adopted without dissent (see minute 48:30 of meeting on YouTube).
This change is unlikely to affect me personally but I fear that it may have an impact on some who are not is a strong position to absorb the increased charges.
(The section on comparative parking costs was added at 18:55 on 24 July)
Tags for Forum Posts: parking, visitor parking, visitor parking permits
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton
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Dear JamesN [2]
It's was a bit sneaky of you to use the same name as JamesN to suggest that their wise, balanced, helpful, and thoroughly evidenced comments are ludicrous, inane, and even hyperbolic trips down rabbit holes. Please let's not forget the key ethical teaching of the famed Thumper.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest
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Bit of a shocker this- the council have contact details of every person who has ever bought parking permits, a residents parking permits, paid council tax etc, and it could have made contact and highlighted this through so many different routes it beggars belief. It feels some how very undemocratic. It does not meet the test of being evidenced based in any way and leaves itself open to be seen as a simple form of taxation.
As an aside, anybody remember these?
I have a full pack of weekend permits unused, and apparently unusable. I do not see any expiry date on them, but of course, the ground rules were changed after I purchased them, and no refunds were/are forthcoming. This and the 10 day permit I bought and was unable to use... Literal highway robbery. Well, my fault for trying to be prepared I guess.
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It has occurred to me that I should sell them off, one by one, to recover my losses.
For Sale: Vintage Haringey parking permits - #MakeMeAnOffer
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Permalink Reply by Aligator
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This is daylight robbery! I don't remember any communication on consultation with the residents. How can we object to this?
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I am drafting an email for councillors, i will share once complete - i am also planning to start a petition asap. Will provide details of both
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson
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I’ve already written to Harringay ward councillors (below) and had a response from Cllr Brabazon saying she will take up the issues and come back to me. The more letters the better!
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Thanks Michael! can you please paste this as text so people can easily copy and paste? Thank you!
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I wrote to Seema on Wednesday, no response yet
Dear Seema,
I was surprised to hear that there had been a consultation around parking charges and changes to they system. Given that there were only 100 responses to this consultation, and 50% of those were by phone, it is very clear that this consultation was poorly publicised and not particularly representative of the borough.
Although the proposals which were put through at the council meeting contained some interesting proposals such as charging by size I felt that the proposal to remove daily parking permits was poorly justified and discriminatory.
Screenshot 2024-07-23 at 17.08.02.png
I listened to your justification of this and had issue with a number of the points raised:
Firstly, this seemed very focussed on complaints from businesses, as I'm sure you will appreciate the vast majority of parking spaces are in residential areas and that is where visitors will be using them.
Secondly, I do not understand why this decision is being based on circumstantial evidence. Surely with the online parking system there is a wealth of data to review numberplates, the frequency with which permits are being applied for and who is applying for them. It appears that the lazy option of a blanket ban is being used rather than actual enforcement against those who are abusing the system.
Thirdly, the suggestion seemed to be that visitors are just parking for longer because it doesn't cost anything extra and if that wasn't the case then they would go sooner. Again, this seemed very focussed on visitors not visiting residents which is a strange position to take. If someone visits me I don't want to be ushering them away because someone else may need the parking spot or, in the more realistic scenario of tradespeople visiting or family staying at my home they will still be parking as long as previously as there is not other option.
Looking out of the window at the moment I can see 20+ free parking spaces and this is the case across many of the resedential areas of the borough. The type of "churn" that you desire is just not necessary across the vast majority and this change policy is using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
I would also note that this makes parking charges even more discriminatory between the west of the borough where there are only two hours per day restrictions (so a cost of £2.40 for a visitor to park for the day) and the east where there are restrictions for 10.5 hours (so £13.20 per day) or even 14 hours (so £16.80 per day) in some areas.
This proposal seems to have totally ignored the additional cost (an increase of 164% from £5 to £13.20 per day) that residents will incur when tradesmen are carrying out work for a full day or friends and family come to stay.
A much more sensible proposal would have been to cap the number of daily visitor permits available at say 30 or so which would stop the most egregious offenders. Historically there were caps on daily visitor permits but, for whatever reason, these were increased to a clearly excessive 999.
I, and I suspect many others, am disappointed at the very poorly publicised consultation and the lack of consideration given to the majority of residents with this proposed change. I hope that the council will reconsider what it actually wants to achieve with this change and take a sensible, evidence based approach rather than the current lazy option of punishing many to satisfy the requirements of a small number of businesses.
I look forward to hearing from you on this.
Many thanks,
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Permalink Reply by Hugh
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Well done, Andrew. For the avoidance of doubt, whilst I chose not to wait on councillors' answers before making this post, immediately after posting I did contact Harringay Ward councillor Anna Abela and Cllrs Chandawani and Hakata about this issue and referred them to this thread, asking both for an accuracy check and comment on the complaints being voiced.
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Permalink Reply by Gina Fenton
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I have lived in this borough for almost 40 years. Our grown up children could not afford to settle here and when they visit with the grandkids it is we hosts that foot the bill for their parking. As we live in Tottenham we don’t get the benefit of many other parts where paid parking is restricted to only a couple of hours each day, and with more and more Sundays being ‘event days’ for non footie events we’d be saddle with a £50 bill if they both came for the weekend!
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When CPZs were introduced in Crouch End and then the west of the borough more generally local residents opted for a two hour restriction as sufficient to counteract commuters and dump parking by car rental companies. When CPZs were introduced in the east of the borough I think there was more concern about shoppers in Wood Green/Green Lanes taking residents spaces, hence the longer restriction hours. If there is a benefit of other parts it is because we chose it. However this move by Haringey to remove the daily permit is outrageous and you need to contact as many councillors as possible, and the local press and local TV concerning this 164% increase...
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Hi All,
I have started compiling everyones comments into questions which i will be sending to cls. Scott Emery, Seema Chadwani & any others i can find - please let me know if you have other key concerns to add.
I suggest anyone with concerns also starts emailing councillors immediately with the same list of comments, and i will expore the option of starting a petition.Urgent Questions
- First and foremost, can i check I reading this correctly with the understanding that that moving forward for residents to have a friend, or family member to visit & park for a day living on the Harringay Ladder it will now cost £13.20 (11 x 1 hourly parmits to last from 8am-6.30) rather than £5, so an increase of 164%?
- When is the statutory consultation regarding this decision?
- How can residents best immediately object to this?
Questions about the policy
1. You have helpfully provided cost comparison for hourly parking in other boroughs, but not for daily parking. What benchmarking have you performed on daily pass costs across other boroughs?
Through some research, we have identified the following comparisons- Islington: £7.20 - £8.00 (on my calculation at £0.90 and £1.00 per hour)) discounted to £2.80 for 60+
- Greenwich: Tradesmen £18.50 per week, and £9 per 10 vouchers (no information on time period validity)
- Waltham Forest: £8.00 (at £1.00 per hour)
- Hackney: £5.30.
- Camden: £8.79
Please provide information on what discussion has taken place regarding this planned discrepancy in cost, and reasons why it was considered appropriate to increase financial burden on Harringay residents to such an extent.
2. When and where was this parking review consultation publicised and through what channels?
- As far as we can see, only 100 residents responded to the consultation in a borough with a population of 180k adult residents
- Please provide information on what was done to increase awareness and engagement prior to this decision being made given it was clearly poorly socialised
- Please provide information on what other options were considered to reduce abuse of permits prior to this decision? For example: Returning to the previous approach of a capped number of daily passes, identifying residents that provide daily passes for non residents to use parking spaces & removing their access to daily passes
3. Where are the results of cost/impact assessment for residents, particularly as relates to discrepancy across the borough in the number of hours CPZ are in place which are highly varied across the borough.
- The longest CPZ hours are in the poorer east of the borough, meaning that those residents will be most impacted by the significant price increase
4. How will the council now support residents who require extended permits for visitors e.g. for tradesmen, medical support, visiting of family members for occasions, family member who provide care services for elderly relatives
- Will we see the return of two week passes?
- If this change goes ahead, how will the website change so that residents that do not have to individually purchase 11 one-hour passes where a day's parking is required?
5. The argument being made in this video at 46.33 of this council recording saying that abolishing daily passes means people are not incentivised to park all day will increase traffic flow.
- What have you done to understand the impact on volume of increased traffic flow to residential streets as a result of more parking turnover for businesses?
- What is expected to be the related impact on local traffic and pollution levels?
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