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.
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
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Hi Anna,
Thanks for chasing this up so assiduously. I truly appreciate it.
I very much hope that the resident pushback on this so far and the involvement of the national media is leading the council to think agin.
However, the outcome of your meeting with Mark Stevens and Seema Chandawani seems still to leave questions unanswered,
- With regards to the question of "why an equality impact assessment was not conducted" , unless I am missing something, an equality impact assessment (EIA) was in fact undertaken by Simon Robertson with advisor Diptasri Basu and approved by Assistant Director for Direct Services, Mark Stevens. It appears on pages 311 - 326 of the Cabinet report pack for 16th July. Since Mark and Seema seem to have told you that no EIA was conducted, if my understanding of the situation is correct, then I have serious doubts about the reliability of everything you were told.
- With regards to the status of the proposed change to the charges, as I understand it, a decision was made by the cabinet on 16th July, subject only to a statutory consultation. As the Council's 2023 "Parking Schemes – Resident Engagement Policy" makes amply clear, "Statutory consultation forms part of the legal process ... It is, therefore, not consultation or engagement with the community". According to the 2023 policy there should have been both a pre-engagement stage and a public engagement (co-design stage). In the absence of groups like the LCSP having any knowledge of the changes to daily charges until after cabinet approval, I am assuming that neither of the stages took place or that if they did that they were extremely limited.
- I'm sure that there was anecdotal evidence and have never disputed it, but a few questions. Firstly why is it not held in council records. Secondly, we have to ask ourselves if evidence of that nature is sufficient for a change of this magnitude. Lastly, why wasn't the consultation process set out clearly in the Council's 2023 "Parking Schemes – Resident Engagement Policy" followed. Surely then any anecdote would be a matter of record.
Since the only option people now have belatedly to engage with the formulation of this policy is the Statutory Consultation, I absolutely agree that they should definitely engage with it fully. I hope that the Council's political antennae are sufficiently pricked to take very careful notice of the collective response.
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Permalink Reply by Anna Abela on
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Hi Hugh,
Thanks for these helpful follow-up points on.
- On the equality impact assessment (EIA), I will check in with Mark again. Perhaps I misunderstood the point he was making - if so, I do apologise. I suspect the point he was trying to make was that a more comprehensive EIA would take place after the statutory consultation, once the Council has a clearer view of the options it wishes to pursue.
- I will double check that the correct consultation process was followed.
- On your last point, as I mention above, I completely agree with you that this evidence should be recorded, rather than presented as anecdotal evidence. I merely wanted to share some of the context provided to us in the meeting on the content of these anecdotes on parking permit misuse and how these anecdotes came to the attention of the parking policy team.
To reiterate, it has been made crystal clear to me that the most effective channel residents can use to influence this policy decision is the statutory consultation. I will therefore be making a submission to that consultation and would strongly encourage residents who have strong views on this proposed change to parking permit policy to do the same. I will keep an eye on the consultation page and post the link here when the statutory consultation goes live.
Best,
Anna
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Permalink Reply by Maddy on
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I don't like being told to 'wait for the statutory consultation' without any information as to how/when/where we will either see or be able to comment on the proposal - after all the last 'public consultation' was slipped in under the radar when it should have been sent out to all residents who will be affected.
Are no letters sent to councillors in the meantime going to count as comments?
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You can see the proposal now, Maddy. I added the relevant part of the cabinet paper at the bottom of my original post (see above). You will have a chance to belatedly comment on it post-decision soon, but, please be clear, Maddy, you haven't missed the consultation. There has been no proper consultation. A process that is clearly outlined in Council's 2023 "Parking Schemes – Resident Engagement Policy" has been completely skipped and replaced with evidential hearsay.
The Council is now promoting two myths:
Myth 1 - that no decision has been taken
The Council is saying, and as you can see from this page is telling our councillors, that no decision has been taken. That is untrue. The cabinet made its decision to approve the policy and moved on (or so it thought). The poicy was voted on by a show-of-hands and unanimously approved "subject to statutory consultation". Any further decisions following the statutory consultation are now formally in the hands of delegated officers with no direct democtraic accountability.
Myth 2 - that resident consultation will happen through the statutory consultation
The Council is now attempting to present the statutory consultation as resident consultation. They are not the same thing. The Council's own Resident Engagement Policy says "Statutory consultation forms part of the legal process ... It is, therefore, not consultation or engagement with the community".
Resident consultations are the vehicle by which councils test that their proposals meet resident approval and give residents the chance to influence policies BEFORE a decision is taken. Statutory consultations are the legally required last quick check run AFTER a decision has been taken. As such they normally only last 21 days. Whereas, according to the Local Government Association, best practice resident consultations last from between twice to four times that length of time to allow residents the opportunity to give real voice to their opinions. The Government's Code of Practice on non-statutory consultations says that they "should normally last for at least 12 weeks with consideration given to longer timescales where feasible and sensible". Let's see how long THIS statutory consultation is set to last.
Having said all that, all is not lost. As I've said before, my hope is that the Council will take note that residents have spotted and challenged this badly mishandled charge increase and even though they have formally delegated powers to officers now, that they will think twice and use back-channels to stop those officers from just rubber-stamping the decision. My hope is that the Council may be inclined to run an atypically long statutory consultation and pay unusually close attention to all responses and so use it to replace the consultation gap their process has left up to date. So, whether you support or oppose this charge increase, it is important that you respond to the statutory consultation - then keep your fingers crossed that it's not too little too late.
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Permalink Reply by JulieB on
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I have had a reply from one of my local councillors (in St Ann's) who is also saying that 'no decision has been taken'. They contacted Ann Cunningham, who has given some answers to some of my questions, and said it's important to comment on the statutory consultation which I will do.
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Yes, respond to the consultation, but the councillor is being misleading when they say no decision has been taken. The cabinet decided to approve the proposal and delegated the final approval to an officer subject to a statutory consultation.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Soper on
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Is the councillor a cabinet member? If not they wont have cabinet papers or take part. The idea (T.Bliar) of allowing local councillors to have a cabinet (or should that be cabal) was a seriously retrograde step for local democracy...
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To see them, they don’t have to be. The relevant papers are attached to the original post.
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Look at this - more misleading here. I had written to my MP (new to me) and he had to remind them to respond. Here again from Ann Cunningham we have the 'just proposals' fobbing off. They should be challenged about this besides the general skulduggery.
Dear Bambos Charalambous MP,
Reference LBH/15758124 - Your enquiry about changes to parking permits (Case Ref: BC52084)
Thank you for your enquiry and passing on the views of your constituent Roslyn Byfield on proposals to remove daily visitor parking permits. Please accept my apologies for the delayed response.
At present those are just proposals and I hope that the following clarifies matters further as we appreciate that local authority business and the Road Traffic Act can be complex.
The law and then the constitutional process.
a. Under the Road Traffic Act 1974 any changes to parking, including charges, must legally consult the public. This is known as a Statutory Consultation
b. In order to commence a Statutory Consultation; the service must seek Cabinet permission and be clear on the proposals (ideas) they are consulting on. Where the proposal affects more than one ward, this has to come to a public meeting of Cabinet.
Cabinet only agreed to consult residents on the proposals, it did not agree to the proposals.
No decision on the proposal can be made until after the Statutory Consultation is complete and residents views obtained
It would be helpful if Ms Byfield could submit her views formally during the Statutory Consultation. We expect this consultation to commence in October 2024. This will allow her point about an increase in charges, as opposed to discontinuing the daily permits to be fully captured.
Ann Cunningham
Head of Service, Highways & Parking
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Yes, they seem to have an agreed line and all are sticking to it.
Decisions of policy are ONLY made by elected members. The cabinet approved the policy and handed it over for the next stage to delegated officers. It has now formally passed beyond the local legislature and unless it is 'called-in' by the scrutiny committee, it won't go back there. Responsibility has been passed to the executive, i.e. salaried officers. So either the Cabinet has made a decision or they've failed in their duty and are passing action to the executive on something on which they haven't made a decision. Have they decided or failed? They can't have it both ways.
As I've said before, my hope now is that the resistance already expressed locally, the coverage by the BBC along with a strong response to the statutory consultation will give the council sufficient reason to use their informal influence with the Executive to ensure that their decision is revised. That would be a response permitted by procedure, albeit an unusual one for Haringey. However, I am feeling far from assured that this will happen. Zena Brabazon said at the LCSP meeting last week that because of the post on HoL there has been a lot of pushback from within Harringay. This has not, she says, necessarily been replicated elsewhere.
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Permalink Reply by Zena Brabazon on
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Hi Hugh,
Thanks for posting your very considered response. As Anna has set out, we met last week about the proposals. Anna has given a very full report of our meeting. Your follow up points are very clear and I have noted them and there are some very clear learning points. But now we are where we are. The crucial thing is that everyone who has written to us, or who has posted on HoL, responds to the formal consultation process, even just cutting and pasting what you've already said so it is formally recorded.
The parking permits consultation is on the agenda for the LCSP meeting tomorrow so I suspect we we will be having a full discussion about the whole thing there!
Zena
Zena Brabazon
Cllr, Harringay ward
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Permalink Reply by Niall on
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Great to see our Harringay councillors being so engaged and proactive on this issue - a proposal that if implemented would cause unnecessary financial hardship to residents/constituents throughout the East of the borough.
I remain of the view that the original proposal was not properly researched or its implications thought through before going to Cabinet. If it had, I am confident it would have been rejected as ‘not fit for purpose’- for all the reasons laid out in this thread.
My main concern at this stage is that the proposed ‘consultation’ will be simplistic and binary - do you agree or not. Given the imperative for the council to ‘balance the books’ on Parking, we may then face the TINA (there is no alternative) response. In fact there are many ideas expressed here and elsewhere on how to deal with the issues that gave rise to this proposal - particularly if they are accurately identified and quantified, rather than anecdotal.
Can we ask our councillors to follow through on the content of the consultation so that it gives real data on the nature and extent of Daily Pass misuse and at least identifies other solutions to this widely discredited proposal?
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