Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Local EV owners - can we unite to do something about the new parking charges?
I’ve seen almost no chat on here or any other forum, other than things I’ve written myself, that recognises the enormous increase in cost for local residents who have electric vehicles being created by the now approved proposal of Haringey Council to charge pay and display prices when using the electric vehicle charging base locally
For anyone who hasn’t seen this in the recent consultation documents, the proposal was to charge £3.63 per hour as with all other pay and display bays when using the on street charges. This essentially doubles the price of charging when you compare it to the price per kWh and average charge speed - and makes it entirely out of line with cost of charging in other boroughs as well as unaffordable. To give an example, I often do a charge of around 40kWh, taking 5.5hours-ish. This currently costs £19 for the charge (with resident’s discount), and once the parking charges come in, will cost an additional almost £20. Ultimately costs like this will make EVs significantly more expensive to run than petrol cars and put Haringey residents off purchasing them or even forcing people to sell up (or to travel outside the borough to charge at less cost but significantly increased inconvenience).
I’ve contacted councillor Abela about my concerns and ask that she clarify the position of the council on this. I’ve also contacted Total Energies (who have taken over Source London) as one of their USPs on their website is that their users will never be charged additional parking charges - something Haringey council appear to be about to contravene. The reason for the new charge is apparently to ‘increase turnover’ on chargers (something that makes no sense given there are already overstay charges in place and ultimately residents will need to charge as much as they need to charge…). Surely the bigger issue is non-EVs parking in the charging bays (as often happens with those situated near to Green Lanes - but rarely seems to be tackled by parking wardens), or perhaps at least an issue with some spaces being used by visitors for extended stays when residents might need them) in which case why not introduce the need for a local residents permit to use the bays, as is done in parts of Hackney?)
Other EV owners - can we unite to email our local councillors and Total Energies to make a stand about this? I realise the consultation period is over (I for one opposed this change and made all these points on the consultation response form) but I just can’t quite believe Haringey Council are really planning to do something so entirely detrimental to their residents and to their apparent aims to ‘encourage’ EV ownership that they’ve stated elsewhere.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Paul
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Seems that Source (or new operator) don’t share the overstay revenue with Haringey. I do think this is a discernible but you can always park within your CPA at no cost?
agree 100% about ICEs blocking chargers. This from last night on Hewitt Road.
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Permalink Reply by KatieH
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At the moment yes - but the new proposal seems to suggest that all users of the charging points (whether they have residents permits or not) will have to pay the pay and display charge. I’m hoping I’m wrong but this is certainly how the documents read…
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Permalink Reply by Olly
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Completely agree that it's such a backwards step and does nothing but disuade ICE vehicle owners from making the change..
As a ICE car owner looking to change to EV, but with no off-street parking, I'm forced to use the on-street charging infrastructure. On-street charging is alreday at least twice the cost of charging at home. This just doubles that cost again and effectivly makes it more expensive comapred to petrol/diesel. Plus the hasstle of having to manage two apps/payment systems every time I would need to charge. Nothing here is encoraging me to make the leap.Also going to be some inherrant unfairness depending on the charging speed of your nearest/reguarly used charging point. If you only have slow chargers near you, the new Haringey charge (as it's an hourly charge rather than flat fee) will be much hgher compared to a fast charger that requires less time to fill up.
As it stands with this policy, on-street charging point will be less attractive and charging point on petrol station forecourts will get more busy and probably overwhelmed. This is not the way to encorage EV uptake and I'm astonished that whoever came up with this policy didn't consider the impact this will have.
The cynic in me feels that the daily parking charge issue was always going to be dropped and was just listed in the proposals to deflect from the other changes proposed like this one. As a result it's gone completely under the radar.
This policy does nothing for Haringey Council's aim for the whole borough to be carbon neutral by 2041. They really need to re-evaluate this policy, but I'm sure the increrase revenue it generates will make this a difficult one to row back on. I hope I'm wrong.
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