Parking Permits - Can Haringey make life more difficult?

What a lovely council we live in. Run so well, and with such incisive decision making.
Again, Haringey have either failed to send out a parking permit renewal form entirely, or just too late to get it back to them with only ten days left on my existing one, despite me chasing them for this three times over the past three weeks.

Year upon year this happens.

Several years back, two tickets and a clamp were my only “reminder” so I’m rather cautious about letting my permit lapse – every year following this I’ve been down to the “parking shop” or whatever it’s called, right by the Civic Centre in Wood Green.

So today I drove down, V5, Council Tax bill and cash in hand, only to find that the swine are now not open on a Saturday. Since when?!

With less than 10 days to go on the permit now that I have received the “reminder” form this means I really don’t have much option but to take a day off work, or to phone Haringey and give them such a balling that they agree to help. I will opt for the latter option first thing on Monday, but who the hell do these people think they are?

If I didn’t have a job, I probably wouldn’t have a car. If I could renew online, I would, and there wouldn’t be a problem. Indeed this would give a cost saving, because they could then close the parking shop almost entirely even in the week – who actually wants to go there anyway? It’s not like the staff there have ever been very helpful or even courteous even when you are only there to buy parking permits.

If I could renew in person on a Saturday like I could last year, then I’d be OK too, but I cannot do that either, so I’m pretty cross.

Who makes these stupid decisions; why close the parking shop for business on a Saturday without making any alternate provision for the apparent few that have jobs? Come on Haringey, are you complete idiots, or is this a plan to extract yet more money; force our permits to expire so that you can ticket, clamp and tow our vehicles?

I note that the vehicle pound IS open for business today, and that the wardens ARE on patrol. So, Haringey can facilitate the enforcement of lapsed permits, but cannot facilitate the renewal of permits on a weekend. Of course, it’s all stacked in favour of them making another quick buck from us.

If it's too expensive to adminster the scheme without causing this much inconvenience, I wish they'd just scrap it entirely - I can't see that parking permits help do much more than make money for Haringey anyway - certainly I see no advantage to them as a resident.

Not happy, and am going to start phoning people to moan loudly on Monday morning. They’d better come up with a better solution than me taking a day off work – it’s quite easy to calculate the cost of this and I’ll be only too happy to send a bill in for my lost earnings!