Monday, May 21, 2007

Parking Restriction Changes

I don't want to seem to be hard on Greenwich Council, I really don't, but sometimes they make it oh so very hard to be nice about them.

They're introducing changes to the parking restrictions in my area. The council know that live in one of the affected roads as I pay them an awful lot of council tax for the "privilege". They also know that I've got a car as I've got a residents parking permit.

So how did I find out about these changes? Did they write to me personally? Perhaps a mass mailshot dropped though my door?

No.

They tacked up a notice on a lampost.

Thanks.

Basically the effect to me is going to be that when I visit a friend near Maze Hill I won't be able to leave my car there overnight, it's going to be a different zone. That's kind of fair, the zone I'm in (CW) is huge.

What will have an impact is that they're taking away the free parking bays around me, so if someone wants to visit me and have their car here during the permit hours (Mon to Saturday until about 6.30pm) I'll need some visitors permits. Which of course the council charge for. Well I think that they charge for them, I just tried to search their web site to check but the search is broken. See! They seem to make every effort to be rubbish.

The notice was put up on the 9th of May and you've only got until the 30th to object. The stealth tactic of trying hard not to tell the residents what's happening might actually work.

On the subject of parking I've just seen this question on the council's web site, "what if I need a courtesy or a ‘hire’ car?" Click here for the full answer but in brief until you've arranged a temporary permit "you need to make alternative parking arrangements." So if my car breaks down and I get a courtesy car when do I put it until the ever so efficient parking people give me a new permit? They've just taken all the free parking away so I think I'm stuck.

Thanks, again.

Click on the image below to view a larger image on which you should be able to read the meat of the changes.

2 comments:

Inspector Sands said...

I had something about this from the council some months back, when they were "proposing" to do this, I think. Didn't know they'd made a decision.

But then again, this is Greenwich council we're talking about here.

Mark said...

I did complete a survey a while ago asking if there should be any changes, to which I answered "no".

That sign was the first I'd heard of it since.