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Thanks.

Tuesday 2 February 2010

Initial post

"I struggle to park in my road"
I think most drivers in the Lloyd park area have said this at one time or another, indeed tonight I have spent another 10 minutes finding somewhere to park a few minutes walk away.
So what is the solution? Is it a CPZ? Is there an alternative? What can we do now?
I freely admit that I don't know the answer to the 1st question, however after deep consideration I have come to the following conclusions about the other questions.
Will a CPZ cure the parking problem?
As the parking problem is at it's worst after 7:00pm and a CPZ only covers daytime, the answer is clearly no.
Marten Road  where I live has 92 houses and by my calculation spaces for approximately 80 vehicles. So if every residency had 1 vehicle (some have none but some have at least 3) there would not be enough parking spaces for all those that purchased a permit.
Brettenham Rd. and other roads with a high number of maisonettes and flats have worse problems. Another way that a CPZ would not work.
The council claim the CPZ will stop commuters into the area but who are the "commuters into the area" that the CPZ is planned to stop?
We have no local train stations, shopping areas, and very few businesses in the area.
Is there an alternative?
In the consultation document the council claims to provide as many parking spaces as possible. Is this really true?
There are lots of areas I can see that could be utilised for parking including garage space that has been abandoned and is being ignored!
So what can we do now?
After driving around the block 3 times tonight it is clear that aproximately 20% of parking space is lost due to the gaps left between parked vehicles. If drivers parked closer to the next parked car the problem would go away.
CONCLUSION
If I paid my £45 a year I could not guarantee a parking space.
Who would benefit other than the council?
We need to park more considerately.
The council is willing to take our money but are not willing to provide sufficient parking.
FURTHER QUESTIONS
Why should anyone have to pay to have their family visit?
Is a 3 week period reasonable to allow public debate?
How many surveys have been delivered and at what cost?
How many replies are required to make a decision?
Will the decision be based on the replies?
Will the number of non replies be counted as a yes or no vote?
Will there be public "Town Hall" style meetings to discuss/debate the proposal?
Why is this consultation process taking place now when the council voted for a review of CPZ charges on the 17th December 2009?
Why is the Public Consultation documentation purely focused on the introduction of a CPZ and not the issue of parking as a whole?
Will surrounding areas be consulted about the potential for their roads being clogged by displacement of parking from the proposed CPZ?
Does this consultation process conform to government guidelines?
Why does the LP zone run 7 days a week 13 hours a day?
Why were we not surveyed on the same option as the LP zone?
Why weren't the recently introduced LP & WA zones reviewed as they caused an "increase in displaced parking". In the public consultation document it says under "monitoring the scheme (last paragraph)" this will happen but in the 1st & 2nd paragraphs of the consultation document it freely admits that the introduction of the new LP & WA zones have contributed to the problem. So why weren't they reviewed?

5 comments:

  1. I have just been to the drop-in session this evening. My issues with CPZ are as follows:
    1. As mentioned above CPZ does not guarantee a parking space. I used to live on Carr Road and it was awful to park in the evenings 5 years ago, it must be awful now. But CPZ would just create a healthy income for the council and not solve the problem
    2. Within the proposed area there are schools, doctor’s surgery, nursery etc. They have not parking spaces therefore they have to park on the street. If CPZ is introduce into the area then teacher, nursery staff, nurses who live outside the area will have to pay £410 a year to park in the zone. This may well discourage them to work in the area and we may lose quality staff which in turn will affect the quality of provision in the area.
    3. The people parking in this area will simply move on to the neighbouring areas and cause the same problem. This leads me to presume that the council policy is to make the whole of Waltham forest CPZ.
    4. The few remaining businesses will die out and the area will become even less attractive to live, work and shop in
    5. More people will turn their front gardens (If they have enough space) into car parks. Less greenery and more concrete!
    6. Finally let’s not forget this tax on parking will only go up in price. The council have to make a profit on CPZ so they will not introduce a free version.
    My family drove to London zoo on Sunday and parked for free within 500m of the entrance, there are quality shops and Regents Park nearby. This is something we can’t do around Lloyd Park. It’s wrong.

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  2. I totally agree with Ray and Gary. This is nothing more than a money grabbing scheme for the council. We are not near a tube or a major shopping centre. I run a small business within the zone and employ more than 20 people, lots of them local, in tough times. Now the council may put me out of business!

    We are a small school set up by parents and employing lots of people, many of whom are mothers for whom this is a job that is also a life-line.
    We are situated in Penrhyn Hall, Penrhyn Avenue, (opp the doctor's surgery) Our children are from 2 years of age. the school was established in 2001.

    We have only just found out about the planned CPZ in our area, yet it probably affects us more than any other organisation (to rub salt in the wounds, the council were even allowed to use our school building for their meeting last night!)
    Our parents come from the local area and further away, and they will ALL now have to purchase an annual permit to drop their children off at the school. This will range from £15 to £90. Often both parents will do the 'school run' on different days meaning that 2 permits are needed. Many of the children are too young to walk to school.

    Our staff, as already said, most of whom have part-time teaching jobs to fit in with their own families, will have to buy permits costing an unbelievable £550 per year. This is what some staff take home in pay each month, so this would equate 1/12 of their annual salary.

    We are visited daily by peripatetic staff such as music and french teachers aswell as speech therapists, educational psychologists and also prospective parents coming for a quick look around. All of these will need vouchers for parking. These would only be available for us to buy at business rate and would cost us hundreds of £'s each month alone.

    Incredibly, as an organisation, we are only given the 1 residents vote, despite the fact that this will affect 100 people and could generate the council £15,000......

    I am trying to get as much parental support at the school together, as well as the staff. We have produced a leaflet for local residents and want to ensure that this goes thru all doors next week. We need to make sure that everyone returns their form.forms that aren't returned will be counted as a yes.
    I would like to make contact with other groups/individuals out there to help us fight this together.

    Please email/contact me: lornamahoney@aol.com

    many thanks

    Lorna

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  3. I did attend the "Drop In" session last night in Penrhyn Hall - and was appalled by what I saw. There were a lot of very angry people there and they were right to be angry as the session was very badly organised.

    On entering the hall, there was a table covered with papers + a voting box - no one was there to give out these papers, or to explain what they were for. We discovered that each resident was supposed to "sign-in" and then complete a suggestions/comments form to be placed in the closed voting box. One of the residents finally took the forms round and gave them to people to sign and complete.

    As for the 2 council employees on duty: Tom Wright and Andrew Skilton - they were certainly not prepared for questions and had not done their homework. Their answers were incorrect and only made the residents more irate.

    For myself I questioned what the green lines were on the plans and were told by Tom that they were parking places - when I said they were incorrect, and explained that the plan was faulty as they have not calculated the spaces taken up by trees and by lamposts - I showed him my plan of Penrhyn and how many places we lose because of this - I was told to park in between the trees and the lamposts - which is great if you have a Smartcar but otherwise no. The number of actual parking spaces is reduced because of the lack of space we have.

    Also Tom kept repeating that the parking plan was to help our parking problems during the day - BUT we have none. It is only at night, and even then we always find places. This in itself suggests that Tom has not done his homework and has NO idea of our problems around here. I asked if he had actually walked around this area and talked to residents - NO was his answer. Did he live round here - NO was his answer, he lives in Newham. Then he admitted that this scheme was being introduced because of the overflow of cars from the Winns Avenue area, and they had nowhere to park, also this new scheme would bring in lots of money per year for the council, not only to be put back into the borough BUT also to pay the traffic wardens who would be patrolling in our area.

    At this all the attendees were very irate. Many were saying that they did not trust the vote, and that the decision has been made already. What % of replies do you need to receive to make a decision - surely if only 10% of the residents reply the vote is nul and void? No-one could answer this?

    This meeting should have been better organised. A councillor present to monitor the situation and take questions. Someone to greet the residents at the door. And finally council staff who actually know what they are talking about.

    It was an appalling evening, and the council should be ashamed.

    I will be writing to Tom Wright's Manager - who I believe is Alan Campbell and lodging a formal complaint as to the way this Consultation is being led.

    I would be grateful for your thoughts on this. Also do we have a Residents Association around here, and if not how do we go about creating one.

    Darryll - resident in Penrhyn Avenue

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  4. Resident - Marten Road E17

    The council state in their consultation document; ‘The aim of a Resident Parking Scheme’ is to make it easier for local residents and businesses to find parking spaces by preventing commuters and other long-staying non-residents from parking near your home’.

    A simple survey conducted during any day of the week on parking habits would reveal that parking congestion in and around the William Morris area are greatest from the hours of 18.30 through to 08.00 through the week and weekend. Parking congestion on our street is not as a result of ‘commuters’ using local parking spaces as is incorrectly stated in the consultation document but as a result of residents parking in front of their own homes - of which I am one.

    To introduce a resident parking scheme on our streets as suggested would only serve to raise revenue for the local authority at the expense of its residents without delivering any benefit to us or alleviating the problem of parking congestion.

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  5. Matters are made worse at weekends because the car park at the park entrance opposite Evesham Avenue has started closing on an irregular basis at weekends. Sometimes it's closed for the whole weekend - just when it's needed most! That means the cars of the football teams who practise there - and those of other park visitors - are parked in the roads nearby. Even so I can nearly always find a parking space day or night, even at the more congested southern end of Aveling Park Road.

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