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.
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.
(The section on comparative parking costs was added at 18:55 on 24 July)
Tags for Forum Posts: 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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Just letting you know I've written to our new MP here, Bambos Charalambous, and contacted a Radio London journalist who's helped us around here in the past publicise key issues.
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Fabulous thank you! I've writen to Ham & High, Tottenham indepoended and Harringay Community Press :)
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Excellent... just wrote to Councillor Lotte as well and copied that to my neighbours, suggesting they do similar. No one around here knew anything about it except one who had seen it on the web.
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Dear all, just had a good conversation with Susana, the political correspondent of BBC Radio London. She's keen to cover this story and wants to meet a group us preferably tomorrow afternoon around 5 pm (we roughly agreed Duckett's Common) but it doesn't have to be there in order to record our views. Are you available then, Hugh, Caitlin and others able and willing? She is off the following week but would also like to fix an interview with one of you on Eddie Nestor's morning programme for next Monday, say.
Please could you let me know availability? If Wed eve is no good Thursday or Friday morning ok for her. If I have a say I'd rather Wed eve or Friday morning.
She also suggested emailing the Haringey Lib Dems about this so will do that.
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You might want to be able to suggest alternatives to funding the Parking Services budget deficit. One that stands out is the irrationally paltry charge of £65 for annual parking permits of households' second cars.
Second cars might not be especially prevalent in Harringay, but in outer parts of the borough the rates are surprisingly high. Overall, some 12% of Haringey households had 2 or more cars as of 2009.
A £100 uplift in the cost of these permits would put the budget in rude health.
Beyond this discussion of visitor permits, quite how a department with a monopoly for allocating, pricing and enforcing all street parking in the borough runs a deficit is a broader and probably more damning question for the council.
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Yes Susanna Mendonca is an excellent reporter, have heard and enjoyed her reports for a long time. Well done for catching her!
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I can do Friday morning between 9am-12, i volunteer wednesday evenings so wont be available then unfortunately. Thank you for your efforts here!
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I could do Friday morning (have to be in Old Street by 12 30) but it looks as if you can only do tomorrow eve, Hugh, and Caitlin Friday morning. So you're not available Friday morning, Hugh? She also mentioned Thursday morning as a possibility: I would struggle to do that but willing to fall on my sword if you two can do it. Need to let her know tomorrow.
Any others out there who'd like to meet Susana and have views recorded?
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Could you let me know if available Thursday morning, Hugh? I have to let Susana know but am out today on a walk and won't have wifi, mostly. She's not available next week but would get her colleagues to do an interview on air with you or someone else. Caitlin can make Friday morning, as can I, but if you can all make Thur morning we could go with that.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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I've had a few messages from people saying that they've been told by one person or another that there's been no decision on this issue, that there's only a decision to hold a consultation. I disagree. Here's why.
This is how the part of the cabinet meeting about the parking review ended:
Cllr. Peray Ahmet (Leader of Council): "Ok, if we can move to the resolution which is to agree the recommendations as set on on page 240. Do we all agree?..... Agreed? .....Ok."
The "Page 240" to which Cllr Ahmet referred is the second page of the "Parking Strategy and Policy/Charges Review" contained in the meeting reports pack (added at the foot of the original post above).
That section has the following:
Recommendations
It is recommended that Cabinet:
3.1. Approves the Parking Strategy attached as Appendix A.
3.2. Notes the responses received to the informal consultation regarding the parking policy review attached to this report at Appendix B and 6.18.
3.3. Approves the changes to parking and other charges as set out in Appendix D (section 2 – paragraphs 2.1-2.3 and section 3 – paragraphs 3.1-3.5) and notes that, subject to the outcome of statutory consultation, those charges will be added to the Council’s approved Fees & Charges and come into effect at the earliest practicable date.
3.4. Approves the changes to parking policy as detailed in Appendix D (section 4 – paragraphs 4.1 and 4.3), subject to the outcome of statutory consultation.
3.5. Delegates authority to the Head of Highways and Parking to:
a) carry out all required statutory consultations regarding the proposed changes to charges and parking policy detailed in Appendix D and
b) make all necessary traffic management orders(“TMOs”), having considered any objections received in response to the statutory consultation, to implement the proposed changes, subject to key decisions being considered by Cabinet; and
c) wherethe Head of Highways and Parking considers appropriate, to decide to either (i) not proceed with or (ii) modify one or more of the proposed TMOs to address any matters arising from the statutory consultation or (iii) to refer the matter(s) to Cabinet for determination.4. Reasons for decision
4.1. The Council needs to ...... etc
As things stand today, the cabinet has decided as a group to approve the review. Yes, the decision is subject to a consultation; the Council has no choice on this. It is a legal requirement. However, there is no legal requirement to do any more than pay lip service to the consultation outcomes. Anyone who's been paying half a mind to consultations in the borough (and probably most boroughs) over the past twenty years will attest to this.
Whilst I don't set myself up as an expert on Council procedure, make no mistake, as I understand things, the decision to enact the review has been made. There are only three ways forward to change the decision to reflect residents concerns:
- The cabinet member can call the decision back for reconsideration
- The scrutiny Committee can call the decision in
- Understanding the strong opposition to the daily parking change, the Council can break its golden rule and actually pay attention to the consultation results and use that as a way to reverse a very poor decision.
As to options 1 and 2, there are very good grounds for calling in the decision. 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. Apparently Cllr Chandwani has been badly advised. In response to a question at the cabinet meeting related to this issue, the councillor gave the following answer:
"So I think what you're asking about is the fact that we're abolishing daily visitor permits. So, just that everyone is really clear, visitor permits are here and they're here to stay. What we looked at is the fact that if you were to buy a daily visitor permit then you are paying £4 for the whole day. If you were to park by the hour, it's roughly about one pound something per an hour. So, really we were incentivising people to stay and park their car for the whole day for £4 or park per an hour for roughly about three and a half hours if they paid per an hour.
"What we heard from residents and businesses is that people parking all day didn't allow people to kinda use those spaces fully and what we did hear is that people were parking their vehicles then going off to work in the City and then coming back and using it as quite a cheap car parking space. So, this is a lot about us putting value on the land that we have for parking and how much is that worth and if I was going to park for three hours and had to pay £4, but then I can also park for eight hours and pay £4, it doesn't make any sense.
"So, I think the hourly rate is the fairest way to go forward and that way it allows that kind of turn-around and churn to allow everyone to use those spaces, specially around businesses where people don't want you to park all day and then go off to work and come back, that actually people can park outside your house. So, I do think there is a current unfairness that this is correcting to make more fair."
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I agree with you Hugh, it is also confirmed in the minutes.
Excerpt:
"The report further sought approval of several parking policy/charges changes that supported the delivery of this new strategy."
"RESOLVED"
"To approve the changes to parking and other charges as set out in Appendix D (sect. 2 – paras 2.1-2.3 and section 3 .."
Please also see attached image of the minutes that also includes the incorrect £4 charge. - Attachments:
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