Let the Government know what you think of Barnet's parking policies

The Transport Select Committee of the House of Commons has issued a consultation asking what people think about local authority parking policies. We suspect there may be a disproportionate response from Barnet residents.

Anyone can submit their views but this will need to be done by Monday 25 March.  Details of the consultation can be found here. 
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/transport-committee/news/parking-enforcement---tor/

Among the issues that Barnet residents may wish to raise are:

• The unfairness of CPZ residents being held to ransom by huge increases in permit charges, knowing that the council is deliberately creating a huge financial surplus in order to  help pay for travel passes and road resurfacing for the whole borough. 
• The folly of removing all cash pay and display ticket machines, making the simple act of parking to pop into a shop inconvenient and confusing for many people.
• Hiking high street parking charges to levels more suited to city centres or inner London boroughs. This has been done at a time when other councils (such as Haringey) are introducing free parking for short periods in order to support their high streets.

Whatever your views, it's important that they are heard. Please find 30 minutes before 25 March in order to take part.

Don't forget: You can now buy half day visitor vouchers

Under pressure from angry residents, the Council introduced half day visitor vouchers last year at a cost of £2.20 each. Still VERY expensive but better than the absurd flat charge of £4.16 for a standard voucher!  Residents in zones which operate for just one or two hours a day will now only need these cheaper vouchers.

But reports reach us that residents are having difficulty selecting these cheaper vouchers when they apply online or on the phone. We are trying to get to the bottom of what the problem is but it may be that Barnet's clunking IT system has residents registered as being entitled to all day vouchers and is defaulting to that.  We will update you when we know more but in the meantime, if you only need half day vouchers, make sure you don't pay the full price. Call 020 8359 7446 if in doubt.

Survey Launched of East Finchley CPZ

Finchley and Golders Green MP, Mike Freer, has launched a survey seeking views from residents of East Finchley's all day CPZ.  You can complete the survey here:

 https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FR3FVQ8

The initiative is surprising given that Mike Freer has long argued that he has no role in or power over Barnet Council's parking policies.  The fact that Mr Freer now recognises that, as an elected representative, he should seek to address his residents' concerns even if they relate to Council business, is to be welcomed.

But there is one glaring omission in the survey.  There is no mention of cost.  The survey only asks for views about the CPZ's operational hours.

Some residents, because of their particular circumstances, will want either long or short operational hours irrespective of cost.  Factors will be how many visitors they have and how close they live to East Finchley High Road.

But for many residents, the question whether they prefer long hours (which will mean buying a lot of visitor vouchers) or short hours (and therefore buying few) will inevitably depend on cost.  After all,   few people can countenance paying what until very recently was a minimum of £4.16 for each visitor. 

We encourage you to complete Mr Freer's survey if you are affected but it's unfortunate that he has not grasped the nettle of cost.  After all, it's possible many residents would accept or even welcome long, all day restrictions if the charges were reasonable?  And wouldn't Barnet Council receive just as much revenue selling a lot of cheap visitor vouchers as selling a few very expensive ones? 

The Long Wait

We have important news (both good and bad) about our legal action to overturn last year's unfair CPZ rises.  Also, please see the end of this post for details of an interesting film being premiered tonight (22 October)

The good news is that, after a slow Summer during which Barnet consistently missed Court deadlines for filing their evidence, all evidence has now been served and the Court have given us a date for the final trial.

The bad news is that the trial will not be until the middle of next year - the 2nd of July 2013.  It seems that the Courts are simply swamped at the moment, particularly with housing and immigration cases. With so much urgent work before the Courts, we, unfortunately, simply have to wait our turn.

When our turn does come, we will be confident of success because Barnet have raised no new arguments for why the increases were lawful.  They simply say, as they have said throughout, that they wanted the Parking Service to generate profits of £5 million a year and hiked the CPZ charges for residents by whatever they thought was needed to achieve this.  In setting the CPZ charges at exorbitant levels, Barnet ignored the advice of their consultants, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, who Barnet had asked to review parking charges and who had proposed far smaller rises.  Barnet also rejected an alternative proposal to spread the rises more evenly across Barnet's road users, preferring to saddle the 10% of residents in CPZs with increases of up to 300%.  Raising revenue is unpopular, after all, so why upset more people than necessary when CPZ residents are such easy targets?

During the long wait till the trial, we will keep our website updated and will also report back on what we have achieved so far.

In the meantime, if you are interested in some of the broader issues affecting the borough (in particular the One Barnet outsourcing initiative), you may be interested in a film being premiered tonight at 6pm at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley.  "Barnet - The Billion Dollar Gamble" is made by film maker Charles Honderick who last year made the thought provoking "A Tale of Two Barnets" which looked, among other things, at the effects of the CPZ rises.

http://barnetalliance.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/barnet-the-billion-pound-gamble-film-premiere-monday-22-october/

Whatever your views, Charles's new film promises to be powerful and thought provoking stuff.