Council accused of trying to triple parking fees

A group of north London residents have accused the Labour-run council of trying to triple the cost of some visitor parking without transparent consultation.

Haringey Council is looking at abolishing daily visitor parking permits that residents can currently buy for £5 a day.

Instead it has suggested only allowing hourly permits that could cost between £13 and almost £17 a day in some parts of the borough.

A spokesperson for Haringey Council said the proposal was still “provisional at this stage”.

Residents told BBC Radio London they first got wind of the plan last month when they saw minutes from a Haringey Council meeting on 16 July, in which the cabinet approved the proposal, subject to a statutory consultation.

Resident Roslyn Byfield, who lives in inner Wood Green, where the controlled parking zone runs from 08:00 to 22:00 every day, said the abolition of daily permits would affect her area “severely”.

She said “older people [who needed] visits from family” would have to pay £16.80 for their visitors to park for a day using hourly permits, instead of the £5 it currently costs for a daily permit.

Caitlin Clunie-O’Connor lives on the Harringay Ladder, which has a controlled parking zone that runs from 08:00 to 18:30, Monday to Saturday, and where the cost of parking would be £13.20 a day with hourly permits.

She said the council had not considered the impact on residents who needed to have family or friends over, or to get building work done.

“I actually don't own a car, but my partner and I are renovating a house and this is going to end up costing many hundreds of pounds more if this comes in, [to have] contractors come," she said.

"It’s quoted in the [council’s] documentation as incremental. I don't think you can argue that a 164% increase is incremental.”

Dr Clunie-O’Connor is also worried about the equality impact, as she said those living in “more deprived” areas in the east of the borough would be disproportionately hit.

This is because parking restrictions in parts of Tottenham, Harringay and Wood Green mostly run for between 10 and 14 hours a day, while in western parts of the borough parking restrictions are mostly for two hours a day.

The residents also claimed the council had not been transparent about the plans.

Hugh Flouch, who runs the community website, Harringay Online, read about the plans in documents from the council’s meeting on 16 July, which stated that an informal consultation had been carried out from 15 January to 4 February.

Mr Flouch, who also lives on the Harringay Ladder, said he had not been told about that informal consultation and he thought the council had not “been reaching out to the established residents’ organisations and groups” like his community website.

Ms Byfield, meanwhile, said she believed Haringey Council had approached the plan in a “dishonest and underhand” way that “lacked transparency” because it had not directly contacted those residents who use visitor permits.

She added: “We understand that councils are nearly all very strapped for cash… but this is not the right way to generate revenue.”

A spokesperson for Haringey Council said a final decision would only be made after residents had had their say in a statutory consultation, due to take place in the autumn.

They told the BBC there had been “an open online” informal consultation, and cabinet members had undertaken “resident focus groups before the proposals were drafted”.

They also said the proposal was “not financially motivated” as it is “unlawful to use parking revenue as an income raiser”, but the the aim of the policy was to address “circumstantial evidence that suggests that the daily parking permits are being misused”.

But the opposition Liberal Democrat group in Haringey questioned what evidence the council had for this.

Councillor Scott Emery, the Lib Dem spokesperson on transport, said: "The entire thing reeks of dishonesty. What this boils down to really is just an increase in car parking visitor charges.”

Haringey Council’s cabinet member for resident services and tackling inequality, Seema Chandwani, said: “We are a borough that is committed to understanding our residents’ needs and wants through healthy engagement.

"Parking spaces in London boroughs with high density like Haringey are in short supply.

"We want to hear from residents in Haringey through our consultation so they can have their say on our proposed changes.

"It will enable us to understand the reasons why daily visitor permits are needed and whether this proposal will benefit our borough or not.”

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