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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Ending of 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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Permalink Reply by Paul Soper 10 hours ago

Alan - has there ever been an occasion when a statutory consultation led to changes of policy - ever?  

Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson 7 hours ago

Yea, if statutory consultees like the emergency services object it tends not to happen or is amended 

Permalink Reply by Caitlin 7 hours ago

Hi All,

Please see below the email & request for information I have submitted to my local councillors Zena Brabazon, Gina Adamou, Ana Abela, Scott Emery (councillor for Highgate who I know shares our concerns) and MP Catherine West.

Please please can folks who disagree with this decision draft their own, or copy paste one of the email examples shared in this thread emails & to express your concerns. You can find you local councillors here: 

https://www.minutes.haringey.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?FN=WARD&...


Email:

Title: [urgent] Concerns & Request for information regarding Parking Policy changes

Dear XXX

I have become aware that on the 16th of July a Cabinet meeting was held at which the Cabinet agreed to, amongst other things, changes to parking charges in Harringay which include discontinuation of daily permits for residents subject to a Statutory Consultation. 

  • I am extremely concerned about the impact of this agreed change on residents, the lack of research conducted and that incorrect information was presented to the Cabinet at the meeting on the 16th. Please see my questions below for details

  • I am shocked that this decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting and not with the full Council given the significant impact on the community. I'm sure, as our local councillor, you would have voiced many of the concerns I outline below if you'd had the opportunity to contribute
     
  • I am appalled that the decision of whether to move forward with the policy following the Consultation has been delegated by the cabinet to the non-elected to the Head of Highways and Parking. This mean this decision has now be freed from political oversight 

Please can you:

    1. Outline how you will ensure appropriate political process is applied following the Statutory Consultation given the clear lack of rigour demonstrated so far

  • I.e. that the cabinet officer is personally involved in overseeing the design, timing and publicity for the consultation. And involvement of the Cabinet, preferably the full Council,  in any decisions  taken / not taken as a result 

  1. Provide full answers to my questions and comments below in the next 10 working days

Many Thanks,

Caitlin

Questions 

Topic 1: Purpose of decision to remove daily permits

According to the Public reports pack 16072024 1830 Cabinet pages 247 - 334, the decision to remove the option for daily parking permits was taken due to the ‘potential for the use of daily visitor permits for uses other than those intended’. (8.10)

Appendix D states that ‘Circumstantial evidence suggests daily visitor permits are open to being used for purposes other than intended’

  1. Please provide this circumstantial evidence 
    • Note: misuse of permits is not a major theme identified from the informal consultation in Appendix B. In fact, increasing the cost burden on resident directly contradicts the public response to Question
  2. Please outline steps you have taken to gather evidence of the the extent of this issue, and the analysis that was conducted to understand how the proposed change will reduce this abuse

Note: As per the public report section 11.10, “The Council must not set charges for vehicles left in parking places for the purpose of raising revenue.” 

If there is no evidence that this change to charges will reduce the [apparent] misuse of parking permits, the only outcome of this change is revenue generation & cost recovery of the £880,000 overspend in Parking (cabinet meeting notes from July 16th) rather than improving local services. 

  1. Please outline what other options were considered to reduce abuse of permits prior to the decision to discontinue daily permits. For example: 
    • Returning to the previous approach of a capped number of daily passes
    • Stopping the provision of digital daily passes
    • Identifying residents that provide large numbers of daily passes for non residents via their online account ( to which you have access to data)

Topic 2: Assessment of impact on residents

  1. Please provide evidence of the cost/impact assessment for residents as a result of this proposed change, particularly as relates to discrepancy in the number of CPZ hours across the borough 
    • Note: The longest CPZ hours are in the less affluent east of the borough, meaning that those residents will be most impacted by the significant price increase
  • What benchmarking have you performed on daily pass costs across other boroughs

Per the agreed change, for a Harringay Ladder resident, full day parking will require 11 x £1.20 permits which costs £13.20 vs the current £5, an increase of 164%


Through some research, local residents have identified the following comparisons

  • Islington: £7.20 - £8.00 (on my calculation at £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.
  • Camden: £8.79

Please provide information on what discussions have taken place regarding this planned discrepancy in cost, and reasons why it was considered appropriate to increase financial burden on Harringay residents to such an extent.

  1. How will the council now support residents who require extended permits for visitors without causing significant financial hardship?
    • E.g. for tradesmen conducting essential work, medical support, visiting of family members for occasions, family member who provide care services for elderly relatives
  2. Were groups such as AgeConcern and representatives of other vulnerable groups consulted about the disproportionate impact of these changes?
  3. If this change goes ahead, how will the parking website change so that residents that do not have to individually purchase 11 1 hour passes if a daily pass is required?
  4. The argument being made in this video at 46.33 of this council recording claiming that abolishing daily passes means people are not incentivised to park all day will increase traffic flow. As will giving businesses parking permits for their customers. This directly contradicts the goals of the Parking Strategy to reduce traffic and encourage a shift towards more sustainable modes of transport.
    • What have you done to understand the impact on volume of increased traffic flow to residential streets as a result of more parking turnover for businesses?
    • What is expected to be the related impact on local traffic and pollution levels?

Permalink Reply by Gina Fenton 5 hours ago

Thank you Caitlin i will definitely write to my local councillors and David Lammy!  thanks for sharing your draft. 

Permalink Reply by Niall 4 hours ago

Hi All, here's a draft leeter to our local councillor I've shared on the Effingham Rd WhatsApp gp.

Dear Gina

I am writing to express my shock and concern at the decision taken at Cabinet on 16/07/24 to abolish the Visitor Day Pass for parking in the CPZ in Harringay and across the borough. This means an effective price increase for residents from £5 per day to £13.20, an increase of 164%!

 

Having watched the video of the meeting through a link on ‘Harringay On Line’ , it is clear that the brief discussion was ill-informed, was based on an absurdly small ‘consultation’ (48 residents, boosted to 100 by a phone survey) and did not consider the impact of this massive increase on local residents. If I recall correctly one Cabinet member questioned it, calling it ‘heavy handed’ - an understatement.

 

My immediate concern is to find out what can be done to reconsider this decision in a way that takes account of the views of your constituents, who I am sure were totally unaware of this proposal. I know there is a great deal of anger and disbelief at this decision, and the way it was taken, on various local WhatsApp groups and through discussion on on-line forums.

 

Like many others I have significant objections to the decision and feel sure that if the proposal had gone to a full council meeting, you and other councillors would have raised these objections on our behalf.

 

Some immediate concerns are:
This will disproportionally affect those on low income who rely on, for example, visiting family members to help with childcare. Also, vulnerable, ill or lonely residents who rely on friends and family visiting - sometimes their only contact -  will find this increase prohibitive.

 

Local tradespeople will be affected as it will increase considerably the cost of doing work on properties on the Ladder. If you are having substantial renovations or other building works over months this could literally add hundreds of pounds to the cost.

 

I’m sure the majority of us have friends and family to stay on occasion - if they stay for a week that’s a cost of £79! Bear in mind residents in the more affluent west of the borough have minimal parking restrictions and consequently will be largely unaffected.

 

Justification

The anecdotal justification for this draconian measure was twofold. It was claimed people were selling on day passes to commuters outside the borough on a daily basis and some businesses were impacted by cars parked outside their retail properties all day. These concerns can readily be addressed by simple changes to the digital pass system - an obvious solution and one that could have been considered had there been proper consultation. None of our neighbouring boroughs have punished local residents in this way, why us?

 

In conclusion, I would appreciate it if you could determine, as a matter of urgency, how this decision can be paused and revisited to take account of your constituents circumstances. Politicians often have a reputation for ‘doubling down’ when errors have been made, I hope you and other councillors can convince the Cabinet that this is a heavy handed and poorly thought through decision that should be speedily reversed and other options explored.

 

Yours Sincerely

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