Forum Message

Topic: Re:Parking zones
Posted by: K Taylor
Date/Time: 21/08/05 20:28:00

Thank you for the replies to this posting, they’ve been most illuminating. I’ve learnt of other people’s experiences, plus have been made aware of the consultation process and the legal position. It’s reassuring to know the council at least consulted some people and businesses local to Deodar Road.

I believe, however, that such consultation was too limited in scope. If people have paid for an annual parking permit that, at the time of payment, allowed them to park in Deodar Road, then they too should be regarded as a stakeholder in the decision making process.

If the council is willing to demand payment from residents to park in certain zones then, when those zones are changed (and the service therefore reduced), the council should at least consult and inform every paying resident affected by the change. While “complying with legal procedures” is one thing, if the council has the right to charge a £100 fine then it should at least have the responsibility to realistically warn residents within the affected zones of changes likely to incur such a fine.

Publishing plans to rezone in local newspapers may indeed fulfil a legal obligation, but not once in a combined time of almost 70 years living in the area have my grandparents and I ever read the Wandsworth Guardian.

Not once in an implementation period of over 10 months were many (or most?) of the affected residents ever informed of the rezoning plans.

If the council really wanted affected residents to stay away from Deodar Road, perhaps it should’ve put bright yellow warning signs around the signposts – something it recently did for temporary parking restrictions down half a mile of my road but conspicuously failed to do for a permanent parking restriction in Deodar Road. It might also have helped if the council had reflected rezoning changes on its own website.

Even if there was a Deodar Road “parking crisis”, in over five-and-a-half years of parking there I never once failed to find a space to legally park my car. How else would at least two people contributing to this forum have incurred parking fines if there hadn’t have been the space to park there in the first place?

Ironically, due to a “parking crisis” I too can’t park in my road. In fact, in over five years I’ve had more chance of finding space in Deodar Road – and this applied right up to the day I received my parking ticket.

As for the issue being precipitated by new buildings in the area, did the council not legislate for off-street or underground parking for the Putney Wharf, Brewhouse and Castle developments that have caused such a “crisis”?

As for “pay and display bays”, in the light of circumstances, these can be viewed as a means of double charging residents who have already paid to park in Deodar Road via an annual resident’s parking permit.

The town centre may indeed be served by “excellent public transport facilities”, but these facilities are next to useless for an elderly 93 year old such as my grandmother. So too getting her a bike (Nan used to like going to the Trinity Hospice shop, my grandfather passed away in Trinity).

For a so-called ‘public consultation process’ of 10 months, the council did a fine job of keeping it well-hidden from the majority of affected residents.

Ultimately, the council would do well to remember it is there to serve the interests of all residents, not vice versa. I object to intimidatory letters effectively demanding ‘pay up or else’ from residents who have already paid many times over via annual parking permits.


Entire Thread
TopicDate PostedPosted By
Parking zones and parking fines15/08/05 12:36:00 K Taylor
   Re:Parking zones and parking fines16/08/05 10:49:00 Enasha de Zoysa
      Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines16/08/05 11:08:00 K Taylor
   Re:Parking zones and parking fines16/08/05 14:17:00 Adam Gray
      Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines16/08/05 16:33:00 K Taylor
   Re:Parking zones and parking fines16/08/05 17:39:00 Alice Bright
      Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines16/08/05 18:24:00 K Taylor
         Re:Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines16/08/05 18:59:00 Alice Bright
   Re:Parking zones and parking fines19/08/05 11:33:00 Nicola Close-Smith
   Re:Parking zones and parking fines19/08/05 15:26:00 Mark King
      Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines19/08/05 16:54:00 Caroline Hutchings
   Re:Parking zones and parking fines20/08/05 20:32:00 Jonathan Callaway
      Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines20/08/05 21:04:00 Adam Gray
      Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines26/08/05 10:26:00 Adam Bailey
         Re:Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines02/09/05 16:23:00 Andrew John Probert
   Parking zones20/08/05 23:45:00 Rosemary Torrington
      Re:Parking zones21/08/05 20:28:00 K Taylor
         Re:Re:Parking zones31/08/05 19:05:00 K Taylor
            Re:Re:Re:Parking zones05/09/05 19:16:00 Enasha de Zoysa
   Re:Parking zones and parking fines07/09/05 10:23:00 Victoria Jones
      Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines09/09/05 17:53:00 Adam Bailey
         Re:Re:Re:Parking zones and parking fines09/09/05 22:43:00 K Taylor

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