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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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris
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Thanks for the update Hugh. If there has been an accumulation of anecdotal reports of misuse of permits, a better response might have been to investigate the matter before taking action. The law of unintended consequences seems to have operated here.
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Permalink Reply by Caitlin
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Hi All,
Posting this for any of you who haven't been following the new thread.
I have just sent the email below to the Haringay Scruity Comittee requesting that they call-in the decision on daily permits. I urge you to do the same, you can reach them on scrutiny@haringey.gov.uk.
I have also emailed my councillors requesting that they ask the Cabinet to call-in the decision.
There is also a scrunity survey running until September 8th LINK HERE - I suggest we all also use this mechanism to raise the points outlined in this thread, plus any other concerns. Question 11 has an open- end box where these issue can be raised.***email***
Dear Haringey Scrutiny Committee,
I am writing to request that the Scrutiny Committee call in the decision to ‘Discontinue the option for daily visitor permits’ made by the Haringey Cabinet on July 16th as part of a broader Parking Strategy Review. A Statutory Consultation on the matter is planned for Autumn.
This request is made for the following reasons:
1. InequityThis policy change has significant financial implications for residents, and will only affect the poorest areas of the borough. The analysis below clearly illustrates the huge discrepancy in daily parking charges that this policy will introduce. The darker blue the ward, the more deprived, according to the Haringey 2024 state of the borough report.
You can see from this graphic that this cabinet-endorsed decision will disproportionately impact the poorer parts of the borough. Full analysis is attached.
It is of great concern that the Equality Impact Assessment did not identify this issue, and this illustrates that the cabinet was not provided with sufficient information to make an informed decision.2. Lack of Evidence
The decision was made based upon ‘circumstantial evidence’ of daily parking permit misuse. This evidence was not presented to the Cabinet. Upon receipt of a Freedom of information request, Haringey Council have admitted that that have no record of this problem:
“The Cabinet report stated circumstantial evidence for the proposal, and this is in the form of anecdotal information which has been brought forward from a range of sources over a number of years. While various sections of the council may hold information, it is not held in a format, nor was it intended to be documented, in manner to be used to supply for such a response’.
You can see the full response here.
Why is a decision with such meaningful, borough wide, impact being taken to consultation to solve a problem that has not been robustly documented or analysed by the Council?
Given that there is no understanding of the scope or nature of permit misuse, how can an assessment of alternative options have been conducted? This is a requirement of a policy change, and no details of alternative options considered were presented in the policy package. Again, this illustrates that the Cabinet was not provided with sufficient information to make an informed decision.
3. Failure to follow due process
The Parking Schemes – Resident Engagement Policy provides (quote) “ a framework for future residential parking scheme design and review”. The Framework requires the following steps:
Pre-public engagement
Public Engagement (co-design stage)
Statutory Consultation
Decision
This policy process has not been followed as part 2 Public Engagement (co-design) did not occur. An online Parking Policy Review consultation took place. This did not meet the criteria of “Public Engagement” because:
Letters and public engagement packs were not provided to all registered properties within the defined area
No street notices were erected
Ward councillors were not be notified of the outcome and the proposed recommendations
Furthermore, the policy states that “The Council will need a minimum response rate of 10% to the public engagement, before any decision can be considered.” Only 100 individuals responded to the online consultation. This does not represent 10% of the adult population affected by this decision.
Given that due process has not been followed, and the Cabinet have been badly advised on this particular issue, it is the duty of the scrutiny committee to call back this decision.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this request. I urge the Scrutiny Committee to exercise its authority to call in the decision for further review, to ensure that any changes to the parking policy are equitable, evidence-based, and follow due process.
Best Regards,
Caitlin
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Excellent message to them, Caitlin!!
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Permalink Reply by Andrew Stillman
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well done for the email caitlin and for the excellent graphic and well done to hugh for the excellent work in rasing the issue in the first place and pinpointing the issues of inequity and due process and to journalist gabriella jozwiak for sending in the foi.
thank you all.
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I'm just building on all the great work done by Hugh and others in this thread! Please please do also contact you councillors and then scrutiny committee to make sure all our voices are heard.
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And when the consultation comes out I'll try to get the media involved again. We clearly need to watch the Council like hawks.
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