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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Ending of Haringey 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. 

As part of the review, an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) was run. As a part of that assessment, equality as it relates to socio-economic status was considered. In the case of the daily parking permits, the situation roughly divides the east of the borough, with all its indicators of deprivation, from the much wealthier west. In the west, two-hour CPZ predominate: in the east >8 hour zones are the rule. The shift from daily to hourly permits will barely affect the west of the borough, whereas it will have a significant impact on the east. The only outcomes noted under the socio-economic section of the EIA are "Positive", "Positive" and ... er ... "Positive". The unequal nature of the daily parking charge was not even considered. So the EIA as it relates to socio-economic status is badly flawed.

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. 

Tags for Forum Posts: daily parking permits, parking, visitor parking, visitor parking permits

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It's clear this is totally a business-focussed decision and pays no mind to the needs of residents to have family visit and work done in their homes. I live on the Green Lanes end of a road closest to a very busy part of the shopping area and I have no trouble finding a space at most times of day, mostly very near my house, except on Sundays when the regulations don't apply. I don't at all understand on what basis they have made this stupid judgment!

I've emailed ward councillors about this making the points others have made, so far no reply from any of them................

Have had a response from one of the Harringay councillors and our street WhatsApp gp reports common thread in all replies .... statutory consultation> I have responded by asking for an example of a Cabinet decision that has been overturned in last 20 years following statutory consultation. No answer yet!!

Also asked what they as councillors can do...

Zena Brabazon, to her credit, has said she will meet with the service director.
Will update when I hear of any outcome - hopefully before the BBC interview next Wednesday

The BBC Radio political team are now on to this. I've just been meeting with the BBC Radio London reporter along with Roslyn and Caitlin. We set up the situation with a few interview clips, but for the main event we'll be represented by Caitlin who will be on the Eddie Nestor show at 11:10 next Wednesday.

The reporter approached Cllr Chandawani for comment, but she is apparently unavailable for interview. 

Yes, it was a really good meeting and I look forward to hearing the piece next Wednesday at 11.10 am.

Well done to all concerned.  Hopefully the consultation may be more comprehensive than we feared.

I've also written to the 3 West Green councillors using Caitlin's email template and adding comments of my own.

Thank you Caitlin and Hugh, I have emailed all the suggested people and my 2 Councillors in St Ann's ward.

Great thank you Julie!

Just thought I'd download the document and noticed that it encompassed 88 pages and yet was only Agenda Item 13, in a document where the first 12 items took up 238 pages.  I remember a councillor many years ago saying that this was how council officials control the council, they inundate members with detail, like, sometimes providing the documentation only hours before a meeting so that no-one has any opportunity to attempt to digest the whole of an issue.  Then, like sheep, they are all expected to follow the party line and vote for the decisions taken by the party.  In his day councillors played a more active role but since the New Labour reforms and the introduction of the cabinet system only those members who hold cabinet positions will play any real role in shaping what councils do.  This strikes me as a perfect illustration of the dangers of the way that councils carry on business these days...

I worked in government briefly a few years back. If a briefing was prepared it was never more than a page, especially for Ministers. 

Hi folks,

I've taken a closer look at the impact of the Cabinet decision re. daily permits across the borough, and included some key information in the images below.

I am sharing this to highlight how the policy update as currently cabinet-approved will have a disproportionate financial impact on the least affluent areas of Haringey. This wasn't picked up in the Equality Impact Assessment, so I am concerned that the Cabinet may not have had all the necessary information at hand to make a fully informed decision.

I encourage eveneryone to continue engaging with your local councillors and to share this information within our community to ensure our concerns are recognised and to encourage the cabinet to reverse this decision.

For those interested I attached some materials with more detail!

Haringay Parking Policy Update_Resident Financial Impact.pdf

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