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
More pieces in this policy jigsaw,
Park for £10 and make me a millionaire - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/oct/08/news.theobserver1
Meanwhile JustPark website indicates that a day's parking near us would fetch someone £112.
I noticed too that what some residents' were apparently renting what used to be bays attached to Council homes.
It seems that lots of further research is needed before fair and prosocial policies are decided.
Elsewhere some local schools are backfilling their budgets at holiday time. Plainly teaching children is entirely the wrong business for our neighbourhoods. I've only once been near the Etihad Stadium in East Manchester but land for multiple car parking seemed to have been a priority.
Hope the Council didn't make this crazy decision based on a 17 year old article and an MSE link (which in any case is full of dire warnings of legal and financial problems)!!
But, given that the deision was only based on anecdotes - who knows...
Mr Barry, can I suggest that using words like "madness" and "crazy", may not always be the best way to persuade people to redo and rethink this piece of work. Admittedly I used the term "anti-social behaviour" and - some years ago - "highway robbery" . But I try to avoid hinting at mental illness.
We all do need to collaborate in convincing perhaps reluctant elected councillors that they got this very wrong.
Sorry for using inapppropiate language relating to mental health. It is wrong to do so, and it won't happen again. Thanks for ponting it out MrStanton
Dear Kevin Barry,
Thanks for responding positively. I too go over the top from time to time.
So let's focus in what many Hol members seem to agree with. Namely lack of judgement by councillors in proposing steep rises as a solution to the parking issues when they are nothing of the kind.
The substantive criticisms which you and I and many others have made of the proposals point out serious and real flaws. This work has been done for nothing as concerned residents and as citizens who want to see a fair system.
I won't apologise to councillors for using the term "pro-social behaviour" as the general goal of a scheme needed: A parking scheme which acknowledges the wish of residents to enable the use of car parking at reasonable cost for visits for instance by family and friends; by trades people such as plumbers, locksmiths, decorators, and other local small businesses and for many social activities such as small children's birthday parties.
No sensible person would object to the use of the word " crazy " in this context. Crazy does not relate uniquely to mental illness. Or do I have to replace my crazy paving with some woke but less descriptive alternative ?
John D - If by chance we met and discussed parking or any other hot local issue I'm pretty sure we would do so calmly and with civility and mutual respect for differences of opinion. I imagine as well that you'd follow and expect similar mutual courtesies if you went to see your ward councillors. On the other hand if they told you you were mad and crazy the conversation might not be very productive.
I doubt wokeness comes into it. Over the years with a few councillors I recall the problem was more likely to be doziness. Especially if a meeting was on a hot summer evening.
As for crazy paving I looked up a road where we once lived which now advertises paved frontage for hourly rent on a parking website. It appeared that some front walls and grass had been removed and access was now over badly cracked public pavement. I couldn't tell from Google Street view whether or not permeable paving was used on the house frontages. Needed to reduce rainfall run-off into drains to avoid the risk of localised flooding.
BBC News: "Council accused of trying to triple parking fees"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cje2243p7zgo
Hugh and others on Eddie Nestor today
BBC London Eddie Nestor show
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0j9qkvj
Starts at 1Hr 18mins for 10 mins
Great job Roslyn for getting us a spot on the BBC!
Thanks, Caitlin - it was so worth doing, wasn't it? I thought we came across well, especially you given the nature of your data analysis etc. I hear the council has the right of reply next week so will be interesting to hear that. They just can't keep using the specious argument about so-called abuse of permits.
My U3a (Crouch End & District) has now picked up on it as someone posted on the Facebook page so that should raise awareness further. Many of them aren't that affected but could well be indirectly if they have friends/relatives living in the affected areas. Anyway, in my view we should all be concerned at the council's lack of transparency.
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