Am I alone in dreading a visit to the parking shop in Wood Green. It's easier (and pleasanter) to borrow money from a bank than buy a permit to park outside my own house!
Alan, re Haringey People mag, I must say I was a little surprised when I opened my latest copy of the tax-payer funded HP magazine "Incorporating Crouch End, Hornsey and Stroud Green news" (September 2010).
Perhaps I should not have been so surprised that the notorious (New-) Labour Party publication carries a full-page, full-colour advertisement on the inside cover for a major private school (Highgate).
Do you detect any hypocrisy or is it just that alter ego Mr Carter being cynical again?
There is a certain Kafkaesque element to dealing with the parking shop. I went there a few months back to buy a visitor's permit for the people fitting my boiler. I live on a street that consists of council and ex-council flats and houses but is just one street, so I wasn't sure whether I needed a street permit or an estate permit for my address.
I made the mistake of asking. The assistant wasn't able to tell me, and just kept repeating "Is it a street or an estate?", then assured me the manager wouldn't be able to tell me either and that they had no list of addresses. In desperation, I finally said I'd buy one of each, and she said "Now that would be a waste of money…" Aargh.
There were several issues both connected to the original contract terms and the poor technology implementation. TFL broke the contract with the original service providers and signed a new contract with better terms and technology. This plus the additional costs of rollout explain why it wasn't used for the cycle scheme in the first instance.
They do pay-by-phone parking in Wandsworth as well, but there's a fee of 20p per time, plus of course the cost of your phone calls. But it does work on a system of paying only for what you use.
I'm a bit suspicious that two arch-Tory boroughs have opted for this system - there must be something in it for them.
Going back to the original topic posted by Al: the Parking Shop.
At minimum I'd hope the views in this thread could lead to an improvement in the service there. For instance, people would clearly welcome doing more online. (And it could probably save money.)
I've written to Cllr Nilgun Canver the "cabinet" councillor responsible, in case she has missed this discussion. I wonder, would this be an opportunity to try out a Citizen's Jury approach?
Unless you can do something tied to the payment of council tax I don't think you can replace that shop with an online one. So much of your presence there is to identify yourself and your right to what you're "buying". Now if each person paying council tax received a parking permit "keycode" that they could use to buy one online then that shop would have a lot less custom.
I'm intrigued to know why the parking & payment shop is no longer open on a Sat morning or late on a Thursday, yet there's no online option to be able to buy residents vouchers etc.
I know savings need to be made, but don't really want to take a morning off work to buy parking permits! Does anyone know if there's another council office that opens at friendly hours for anyone with job that doesn't have flexi-hours?
despite the queues all the staff were very helpful whenever I went, real shame if that out of office hours service has totally gone.
Several years ago I lived in Harringay (Kimberley Gardens) and find it hard to believe that you people who live in Harringay are now being charged to park OUTSIDE YOUR OWN HOUSE? Can you not do something about it?
I suppose I am lucky living in the depths of Cornwall now, but believe me my heart goes out to you unlucky people. Hope you can get this stupid thing turned round.
Roy Bowker
Actually, I guess we're being charged to prevent other people from parking outside our houses - we don't actually own the public road or have any right to a parking space in front of our property.
Not quite, we do spoil the street somewhat if we insist on exercising our "right" to park outside our houses, especially if we have a really big white van.
Parking is an economic externality and should be paid for. Look west and see the absolute scum politically active residents of HornseyAndWoodGreen who we are subsidising because they think they're cleverer than Brian Haley.