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
Wow - this is a massive deal for anyone who has contractors working at their property or relatives coming to visit
This is terrible! They already increased the price of both permits just months ago - for our elderly inlaws visiting this will have a huge impact. Anything we can do? I definitely didn't see the parking consultation - any indication where it was publicised?
What review? If no-one on this site picked up on it before then it can't have been publicised at all, which is disgraceful.
Excellent: Punish the overwhelming vast majority who use the daily passes for legitimate purposes based on vague assertions to "circumstantial evidence" of abuse with no specifics.
Any one who has had a contractor, construction crew, tradesman, etc., know that often it is not predictable how long that person or crew will be on site each day. A daily pass takes care of any ambiguity in this regard.
With construction people I've had, they have had their van parked anywhere from minutes to 10 hours. How is that supposed to be dealt with operationally? Am I supposed to go through the hassle of tacking on an hour online pass every hour the crew is there? (I would be rather angry if I pay the aggregate daily amount only to have the crew leave in three hours.)
If this is really an issue, then there ought to be provision for a system where daily passes can be issued subject to a higher level of advance approval, e.g., submission of a construction contract, limited to a certain vehicle registration, no more than say 30 daily permits to that vehicle without a new application. I hate the thought of it but it would be better than having to ask the construction crew every hour how much longer they plan to be around that day.
Another one who had never heard of this review. As others have said, it's likely to get very expensive when you have tradesmen (when I had my loft converted there was probably a month or two of a van on site) or when family come to visit for a week.
The obvious elephant in the room is that large parts of the borough, particularly in the west, only have parking restrictions for a couple of hours a day so will be benefitting again from this.
I would also note that with the electronic permits it should be trivial to link number plates, the frequency with which they are using visitor permits and who is buying them. This should allow them to identify whether this is an issue and take enforcement action rather than just relying on circumstantial evidence.
Having watched the video it looks like this is being pushed for by businesses who want more people to be able to park outside their business rather than residents.
I'm ashamed and embarrassed that I was unaware of this change.
As a former lawyer I had and have a dislike of the vague term "Anti-Social Behaviour". Having read Hugh's and the other comments I'm prepared to consider making an exception in this case.
At least at first glance this appears to be "Anti-Social Behaviour by Haringey Council".
Several of the key points are made by Hugh and other HoL members. I suspect there are many many more.
I haven't yet had time to download the specific Council report. Any chance that someone can email it to me? alan.stanton@virgin.net
I hope the Council included background papers? And I very much trust these are NOT withheld from the public. (And so require months spent on Freedom of Information requests which meet excuses /prevarications / delays/ reviews / appeals etc as in other instances where this open/transparent/accountable Council is unwilling to live up to the Nolan Principles.)
To me there appears an irony here: that our elected council is planning to replace the private abuse of temporary renting-off slices of public highway - with another exploitation: highway robbery to backfill the Council's budget.
I was surprised to learn from Hugh's post that there was no dissent by councillors. Do those few now sitting as "Socialists" live in posh roads needing no parking permits?
Okay, I know I know. I really ought to hold back my feelings until I've actually got and studied the papers with care. I admit too that part of my (obvious) anger is with myself for not being up-to-date with this stuff.
But really, have councillors or staff learned nothing from past mistakes?
A final point and a suggestion. If your friends always use an online nickname. Or if your parents only gave you one name - hoping you'd be the next famous Ella or Adele - then this won't persuade councillors to take notice. They want votes votes and more votes. And that means full names which appear on electoral registers.
Here you go, Alan. Added to the bottom of the original post.
Another not aware of any review. This seems like a absolutely ridiculous change especially when its based on some circumstantial evidence that's not published (as far as I can see). I fear for the impact this will have on people having family and friends to visit for a period of time at an extra £8.20 a day. Maybe a better approach would be to limit the number of permits available given you can buy a 1000 a year.
One thing I noticed is that that 8.8 gives visitor parking permit access to businesses also which may or may not be related.
I assume given this is passed, the only thing we can do now is write to our locale councillors to complain about the way this was implemented and attempt to get this looked at properly
"some circumstantial evidence that's not published (as far as I can see".
Everyone can help out everyone else by recording and pooling any efforts to get information.
Anyone who's asked for this evidence please post a copy of your request(s).
I appreciate that people may sometimes be frightened of the revenge of the powerful. In other words in effect there's an informal witness protection programme in operation.
I know from personal experience as a former elected councillor (1998 - 2016) that the great majority of staff are decent honest people who are keen to help residents.
So start by expecting the best.
Have Plan 'B' ready, of course.
Closing dates passed? Then the problem is anti-bureaucracy not anti-gravity. Perpetuating poor decisions because they were made is just deeper stupidity.
I've sent a FOI for what is the evidence, I guess will see in 25 days if they are going to share.
Great. Have you by any chance used the free website What Do They Know ?
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com
Clive Carter has been chasing an F.O.I request for many months. It relates to one of the dubious Haringey property deals of several years ago. The usual practice has been to delay an answer and then say it's exempt. Last I heard Clive was awaiting a ruling from a Judge.
I very much hope Clive wins. It could even help persuade Haringey's big cheeses to end their apparent attachment to the long defunct "Secret Squirrel" children's Cartoon show.
And who knows, wonders never cease - to try out openness and accountability instead.
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