Council's failure to consult properly regarding parking restrictions

[Deleted User]

Hello, I'll try to keep this short and brief. In a nutshell:

We have a major parking problem in our street (and area). The council agreed, launched a consultation but now they've ignored all our comments and are going to proceed with their original plans to impose parking restrictions that we know won't work - and which are a total waste of money. How do we challenge this?

In more detail:

We live in a new-ish estate around the back of a hospital. We have a drive, so parking is not a problem for us.

The hospital had a nice big carpark which could fit all of its cars, but a couple of years ago they put some portacabins on it and so for the past 24 months the whole estate gets flooded with people parking for the hospital - in particular, hospital staff. On Tuesday and Thursdays (clinic days) it is particularly bad.

Here is a photo of the view from our window

As you can see, cars ALWAYS park on this left hand-side, coming up the road. In this photo, one commuter has just dumped their car on the junction, blocking the view into the turn for everyone else. This is very common.

The situation is so bad that during icy weather, we do not risk driving because it's so easy to skid and hit the cars on the left - as you will see from the photo, the road is really narrow and on a slight slope. All the cars who park there have dents in the side because cars struggle to get through.

It's so bad, in fact, that whenever the dustmen come to our street they can't actually get past the cars and so they drive up onto the path shown and come up the street with 2 wheels on the path and 2 on the road. We are angry because if there were an emergency that coincided with clinic day, we doubt a fire engine could get into our street.

In October last year, after hundreds of complaints from residents, the council agreed that there was a major problem and launched a 'consultation' from residents.

They drew up plans for a series of parking restrictions, including single and double yellows - and sent them to us asking for comments. It was a complex proposal covering over 40 different streets. For the photo shown, they want to put a single yellow line on the right-hand side, even though no-one parks there and no single car has ever parked on that side in the four years we have owned our house.

Importantly: they asked us whether we agreed with the proposals and for our comments.

We wrote back - along with other residents in our street - advising them that we thought their proposals would not work. It's not just a case of 'it won't work', but 'you're wasting your money putting yellow lines where no-one parks anyway'. We put forward proposals for double-yellows and suggested areas where traffic is bad - in fact, we took quite a lot of time and put a lot of thought into why their proposals were not going to be effective and how they could be improved. We were quite thoughtful about it and tried to be constructive, rather than just 'it won't work and we want to park!'.

One month ago we all received a piece of paper through our doors thanking us for our comments and advising that the council has decided to progress and that the plans are available to view in the local civic centre.

We were confused - which bits of the plans had they changed? - and so contacted the council who told us:

- They were going to proceed with their original plan
- The purpose of the consultation was just to see whether people agreed with the proposals. More people ticked 'yes' than 'no', so they are going to implement them as per originally intended, without any changes.

We're really angry about this, as the proposals are complicated and you can't just tick 'yes' or 'no' to them - there are yes's to some bits and no's to others.

We're angry because we know - having lived there for years - that these proposals won't work and that the council are wasting OUR money implementing a plan which we've told them won't be effective.

We're angry because what's the point of a consultation if you're not going to listen to people's comments and instead you're going to make your decision based on a simple yes/no question? You can't answer yes or no to these complicated proposals: some bits are good, some bits aren't. These proposals cover 30+ streets.

So, how can we challenge the council's decision? We phoned them and were told to arrange a petition, but is there anything further we can do.

The situation is bad that some have questioned whether we can be designated a private road as we seem to never receive any support in this area. Council services like dustcarts can't get up - and our salt bin is empty as gritter lorries can't get up there. Our grass has never been cut in the four years since we've lived here (well it has, BY the residents!) and parking remains out of control.

Any ideas?

Pound

Why do you think the proposals won't work? I'm assuming your only complaint is that the council plans to place restrictions in areas where there isn't currently a parking problem?

In your photo what do you think would happen if the council only painted double yellow lines on the left but still allowed parking on the right? Don't you think all those cars would just start parking on the right instead?

If parking is restricted, drivers will just look for the next nearest available place to park and the council have to consider this when drawing up plans. Otherwise they would just be moving the problem to a different area.

olly300

As well as arranging a petition contacted your local councillors. Depending on where you live they may be local elections in May.

Also write a short letter to the local newspapers stating why the proposals won't work and that residents views have been ignored.

You need to gain as much publicity as possible to show the council hasn't thought the issue out properly.

BTW you are lucky in all the areas I know with hospitals including my own, when there are problems with parking they just put in residents parking zones.

pmduk

You should realise that councils only issue consultations so that they can then proceed and do what they had planned to do in the first place. Albeit pretending they have public support.

peter_the_piper

If your drives are free in the day, why not rent the space out to a member of staff. Removes one car from street, helps an NHS employee and gives some money.

Storck

Maybe they are going to put the single yellow lines there as they think the problem will move when the rest of the area is no parking. If all those people can not park elsewhere and find the stretch of road you are on about word will spread fast and people will park there.

sagalout1954

Contact the local Councillor for your area, if you don't already know their details it will be on the website for your Local Authority along with their 'surgery' dates so you can pay them a visit (usually held monthly), - all 3 main parties info will be found there and ordinarily will include email/phone numbers if the surgery dates aren't quick enough for you.

Take your comments, alternative plan etc along to their surger and make him/her look into this fully and find out what your appeal avenue is. In particular, he/she can determine whether the residents views were indeed largely ignored or not. Give them a week to get answers.

When the public speak to 'the Council' by and large it goes in one ear and out the other. When a Councillor gets sucked in and asks 'the Council' to JUMP the response is likely to be "how high". Get your Councillor fully involved, poke him/her with a big stick and make a pest of yourself.

Do you have a Parish Council as well? If so, drag them into this as well.

Good luck

[Deleted User]

Thanks for all your replies. I'm not sure if councillors are already involved, but if not I will contact them and try to get them interested.

The issue really is that parking in our street makes it very dangerous to drive to our own houses. I know everyone complains about commuters, but really - this is ridiculous. Our streets are very narrow (bad design!) and when commuters park it is so difficult to actually get through. What normally happens is that you have to drive at 3mph in first gear and carefully squeeze past them - it's tighter getting through some spots than it is getting into a parking space, at times. I'm really not exaggerating (hence why I have 120+ names in support).

The real issue here is VERY interesting. The portcabins on the car park have actually overstayed their planning permission, but the council are ignoring this. So, if they were to enforce their own planning restrictions, the portacabins would go and the car park would be available once more. So, you could say that the parking situation is the council's fault in not enforcing its own planning regulations!

Storck

If the planning permission has expired but an official complaint in asking for an enforcement notice to be issued. They have two options, extended the permission or issue the enforcement notice. I always find out individual letters to the council count much more than a list of signatures. If you get 10 people to write different letters in complaining they will take more notice than one petition. This is mostly due to the fact they have to reply to each letter.