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
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...
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
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
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?
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.
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
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.
Well done for taking action, Caitlin.
Re 'Urgent questions':
Q2. If you're going to ask about the consultation, I'd forget asking about timing and focus on the 'delegated' nature of the process. 'Delegated' means that it's been freed from political oversight. I'd ask/demand that assurances are given that the cabinet officer is personally involved in overseeing the design, timing and publicity for the consultation and in any decisions taken / not taken as a result and that she will make a full report to the full cabinet about the process and decisions arising from it.
Q3. We know the answer to that question - emails to Seema Chandawni (Resident Services and Tackling Inequality - seema.chandwani@haringey.gov.uk) who I think is the lead on this, Mike Hakata (Climate Action, Environment and Transport - mike.hakata@haringey.gov.uk), your ward councillors (firstname.surname@haringey.gov.uk) and Head of Highways and Parking (officer not councillor) Ann Cunningham (ann.cunningham@haringey.gov.uk), social media, press.
Excellent email, Caitlin.
You might want to add the plain statement that those points do not appear to have been considered either in the rudimentary and short initial "consultation" or in the long Parking Policy document presented to the Council, including when formulating this particular proposal.
I just had a plumber turn up to do some work. I asked him how long he would be here for. A got a vague 3-4 hours? in response. In fairness the plumber will take as long as he takes, he does not now until he gets into the job what he will find. He could take 6 hours.
So, what would I do under the new regime? I guess I would give him 4 hours, and I would have to keep checking in with him- as the likelihood is (from experience) he would not remember to keep a track of time. What if I were to go out or have to be on a work call and not be available to issue a new permit, or we both forget? The poor plumber ends up inadvertently with a ticket that wipes out half of what he is earing from any job.
'4 hours...', I said, 'I will just give you a day permit, nice and easy, no risk!'. We both move on with what we have to do, and the inefficiency created by having to manage the parking situation is negated!
If the objective is to stop folks using permits inappropriately, maybe heavy users can be tracked and their inappropriate behavior stopped- or, easier still, put the cap back on them that was recently removed. really, who needs to be able to buy 960+ daily permits in a year the number I can currently buy...)? I am sure the technology can do this!
The rise in cost to residents is massively unfair, but I can also see the benefit of stopping non-residents abusing daily vouchers. We live in one of the roads closest to Turnpike Lane tube station and during the week it can be impossible to find a parking spot because of all the non-commercial vehicles that rock up at eight in the morning and stay all day. We end up having to park in neighbouring roads, which we can manage, but our many elderly neighbours cannot.
I agree, RD, but what escapes me is, now that all permits are digital, why are daily permits more susceptible to abuse than hourly ones? Surely any daily permit abuse will just carry forward to hourly ones.
I guess it depends on whether they'll be happy to pay the higher price. Presuming they are buying them from helpful third parties doing the online purchase, the increase will have to be passed on.
Just had a quick look on EBay and saw them on offer for a CPZ in Camden. Sure they are easy to pick up if you know where to look
And if someone is (as Alan Stanton says) running a small business, surely a digital system has been designed with sufficient intelligence so that the Council will see who is persistently using [10] daily permits a day every day. Surely there is a way to manage this to sanction the 'offender' or limit the potential for misuse without having to impact *everyone* in the borough?
Thanks Michael Anderson for looking up Ebay. Depending on the heaviness of the flow of vehicles, it's possible the pavement crossover may take a hammering - with long-term repair cost implications. Maybe as well, there could be a temptation to knock down a wall or root-up bushes or hedges; and even dispense with saplings!
If it turns out that many inner London boroughs are seeing this trend then close liaison with them seems sensible. Putting heads together may solve this puzzle faster.
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P.S. Everyone seen the film with Maggie Smith in Alan Bennett's: "The Lady in the Van"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_in_the_Van
There are now websites which people can use to advertise their driveway as parking space(s). Time slots can be booked and payment.made via the website. If a driveway is on private property there might be tax and insurance issues. (And maybe others I haven't yet thought of.)
But this is not the same as in effect monetising public highway parking to run a small business.
Has anyone come across a website supporting or advertising the latter arrangement?
Thanks
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