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 Roslyn Byfield on
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Interesting as she was one of the people it was suggested we contact....
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Have i got this right Hugh?
The council are going to charge £80 per week for my family to come up to London to visit us, but it will be virtually free/unchanged in Crouch End or Muswell Hill?
Do you know how this decision can be changed? Thanks
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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As things stand, that seems to be what the Council are saying, Kevin. At the time I wrote this post, I also wrote to Cllr Seema Chandwani, the cabinet member responsible, asking her to look at this post and check that I had understood matters correctly.
My reply from her, that I referred to yesterday, didn't challenge the essential notion of what I'm saying, but referred me to the statutory consultation as the vehicle for amending what's proposed.
I haven't published her answer in full as I've gone back with a few questions including one to understand if she/they agree/s with the challenges we're all making here, also asking why the new measures weren't designed in the first place to be equitable and not place such a burden on residents as the price for fixing abuse and also why that abuse is expected to be less where hourly permits (that can be used in daily blocks) are used in place of daily ones.
It still could be the case that what's proposed is the abolition of paper daily permits, but if so, they haven't said so and Cllr Chandwani didn't take the opportunity to make that point to me yesterday. So, I suspect that's not what's currently proposed.
What's important now is that the Council amends the proposals as currently constituted to take account of the concerns expressed here. It can too often be the case that council proposals can be quietly introduced without much ado. But, since I've blown the whistle on this here and people do seem to care, there is a good opportunity to get things changed.
The best people to write to are your ward councillors and Cllr Seema Chandwani. I should say, that whilst I haven't been in touch with her for a good few years, for a while there I was communicating with her more regularly and she was always open, constructive and helpful.
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Permalink Reply by Maddy on
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Considering she is the Council's cabinet member for Resident Services and Tackling Inequality she really needs to take a closer look at the effects of this proposal - might be worth mentioning that in our letters!
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An 'Equality Impact Assessment' was included as part of the report that went to committee, but the officers rather missed the elephant in the room.
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Permalink Reply by Nigel on
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Hugh has it. The EIA and the Report are both flawed. And although the report (written for Seema) appears deliberately to recite every possible consideration, no matter how contradictory, it seems not to have logically related this particular recommendation to them or said how those factors have been considered and balanced for it.
There is a good argument for the executing officer to refer the report back for these points to be considered at this stage.
An alternative would be if these councillors had the independence and temerity to ask for that course. But that would also require a climb down of their own, as well as the officers.
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Permalink Reply by Pacific_Flower on
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I've also had a reply to an email I sent to Seema Chandwani...
There will be a public consultation in 6- 12 weeks time before any changes to parking.
"No decision will be made until the Statutory Consultation is complete and all views considered"
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That's reassuring!
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No, it's not, Roslyn. I've made clear from my first post that a 'statutory consultation' is on the cards. Seema's email tells us nothing new.
The paper that was passed (posted in full at the foot of my original post) has the following Executive Summary :
"The cabinet report seeks the adoption of a new Parking Strategy, designed to foster a cohesive and forward-thinking approach to traffic management. The strategy refines our parking management framework, significantly enhancing its contribution to the Councils strategic objectives. The strategy aims to alleviate congestion, support local businesses, improve air quality, and enhance the overall vitality of our diverse community"
My understanding is that the policy has been adopted subject to consultation. That consultation has been delegated to officer (i.e. unelected) level. As I and others have made clear, the issue with post-adoption consultations is that all too often they result in little change.
As Nigel has said above, the paper can be referred or called back in, but by this stage it doesn't have to be. My aim in spreading the word about this issue is to inform people and give them the chance to create enough head together so that the issue has to be be brought back under political control, either formally of informally. On its own a 'statutory consultation' can just be a meaningless paper excercise. Don't put any faith in it.
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I didn't mean overall reassuring - I meant that it won't at least happen for some weeks. Before that it wasn't clear to me when it was happening ie not right away.
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