17 December (Part 1) - Parking charges up again - percentage : infinite
I
always take a look at the Public Notices that Bexley council puts in the News
Shopper each week, though it’s not always easy to work out what is being
proposed. I’d guess most people don’t bother, nor do they stop to read scraps of
paper affixed to lamp posts etc.
The following is typical of the responses to the news that evening, overnight and
Sunday charges are being introduced to yet more areas of the borough…
Your Saturday blog
about the creeping movement towards full 24/7 pay parking does not seem to have any rhyme
or reason apart from the obvious of raising revenue. They seem to be targeting a few
roads in each part of the borough. Not obvious how or why they have been selected.
From my knowledge of the roads in your photos I’d hazard a guess that they are targeting
roads with terraced housing and not much off street parking so that by charging 24/7 they
hope to catch residents when they come home from work and who normally park on the road
outside their houses.
If this is their hope then as with their other measures it is likely to be
circumvented by residents squeezing cars on to front gardens however small.
They have not included Townley Road where all properties
already have driveways for off road parking. Of the road in your photo a major
effect is likely to be on the Sunday congregation at the adjacent church since
they only have a small car park. Are the council not obliged to give some sort of
traffic based reasons why 24/7 changes are deemed appropriate? e.g. Easing traffic
flow/removing congestion or some such twaddle however spurious.
Without some basis being given which could then be disputed; on what grounds would objections
be considered? Any sort of guidance you could give to your blog readers to help
them object effectively might encourage them to do so.
I’m not sure I can give advice on parking matters. I am rather proud of never giving Bexley
council a bean for parking in my 26 years in the borough, it’s the sort of question I would
have passed to Notomob before its demise.
As the writer indicates, one really needs to know what is in their devious minds
before an effective challenge can be mounted. I suspect it might be possible to
formulate a Freedom of Information request seeking the correspondence which led
to the decision to make the changes and maybe discover what imaginary problem
they are trying to solve. Too much advice giving has in the past led to being embroiled
in hugely time consuming activities for which there is simply not enough time in the day.
One piece of advice I could perhaps give: stop voting the same old faces into power! They only abuse it.