Saturday 27 June 2009

updates needed and new commenters!!

If you are reading this and know anyone who's interested but isn't aware of the blog,please pass the link onto them!

I thought I would post this reply I recieved way back in January in response to my complaint about the CPZ and my request to know why such a stupid thing had been bought in at the expebse of the surrounding roads.No doubt it will look famlair to some of you as it is a bog standard reply sent to all.


> Dear Sir or Madam,
>
> Councillor Belam has asked me to acknowledge your email about parking
> congestion. At the end of 2008 the Council implemented a Controlled
> Parking Zone (CPZ) in the area between Forest Road and Winns Avenue.
> Within the zone most parking spaces are reserved for 'permit holders
> only'. Permits are issued only to people who live or work at an address
> within the zone.,
>
> Since the new scheme was implemented the Council has been contacted by
> a number of residents of Elphinstone Road, Fleeming Road, Carr Road and
> Pennant Terrace reporting parking congestion in this area. Council
> Officers have visited these roads and observed a high density of
> parking, as residents have described. Parking enforcement in the new
> zone started early in January. After the scheme has had time to settle
> in the Council will in due course carry out surveys and site
> observations to assess the effects of the scheme and this will include
> looking at the parking density in roads outside the zone, including your
> own, which might be affected.
>
> If, as you may fear, parking transfers permanently into your area as a
> result of the schemes now being introduced then CPZ extensions may be
> considered in future subject to consultation with residents. Council
> Policy is that permit parking schemes are introduced only in areas where
> consultation has been carried out and a majority of replies are in
> favour.
>
> Public consultation for the new CPZ took place last July. Relatively
> few requests for permit parking schemes had been received from your area
> compared to other areas where CPZs have been agreed and at that time the
> Council’s parking policy gave priority to schemes within half a mile
> of the main transport hubs and town centre areas. For these reasons
> Elphinstone Road, Fleeming Road, Carr Road and Pennant Terrace were not
> included in the consultation area. Since then parking policies have
> been reviewed and in future priorities will be agreed based on an
> assessment of the level of public representation campaigning for a
> scheme together with the level of problems identified on street from
> surveys and site observations. The previous policy giving specific
> priority to transport hubs and town centres no longer applies.
>
> Petitions or requests asking for a permit parking scheme may be
> submitted either via your Councillors, by writing to Waltham forest
> Council, Public Realm, Low Hall, Argall Avenue, London E10 7AS or by
> emailing wfdirect@walthamforest.gov.uk If you want to speak to your
> Councillors about this policy or any other issue their contact details
> can be found on our website at: www.walthamforest.gov.uk/councillors
>
> Parking schemes are not funded from Council Tax or Business Rates
> therefore charges are made to help cover the cost of running the scheme.
> In all Waltham Forest Controlled Parking Zones the standard charge for
> a resident permit is currently £45 a year for the first vehicle, £85 for
> the second vehicle and £115 for the third and subsequent vehicle (these
> charges are approximately halved for a low C02 emission vehicle, or
> doubled for a high emission vehicle). Business permits are available
> but the annual cost is considerably higher - £390 for the first two
> vehicles at a business address and £550 for subsequent vehicles.
> Short-term permits for visitors (50p for an hour) are also available.
> More details about permit charges are on the website at:
> www.walthamforest.gov.uk/parking-permits
>
> If you wish to object to the Traffic Orders for the CPZ scheme please
> see paragraph 6 of the public notice (also attached) which was
> published in the Waltham Forest Magazine (WFM) dated 17/11/08. The
> experimental orders came into force on 1st December 2008 (although
> enforcement did not start until January) therefore the Council must
> consider and respond to any objections received within the six month
> period from that date, or from a later date if variations or
> modifications are made.
>
> yours sincerely
>
>
>
> Tom Wright,
> Waltham Forest Council, Traffic Team,Low Hall, Argall Avenue, London E10
> 7AS.
> Tel: 020 8496 1039
> email: tom.wright@walthamforest.gov.uk
> Web: www.walthamforest.gov.uk
> Roads & Parking: www.walthamforest.gov.uk/parking-roads

Sunday 21 June 2009

I think it would be great if we could get some kind of confirmation from the Police that this has caused more problems. The problem is that the Council are pushing EXPANDING the CPZ as the answer to the problem. We have to make sure that doesn't happen, we need to go back to how we were.

Basically if we don't get the decision on the LP area of Winns Ave overturned (remembering that the residents of LP voted 3:1 against being in the CPZ anyway) even if they then want to actually do the survey properly (which will clearly fail which is why they are trying to wiggle out of it) It just means that the CPZ will be expanded indefinately till the whole Borough is paying to park and the council are raking it in.
It is shocking.

Remember there is still time to send in a corporate complaint and to complain to Traffic Orders in writing to formally object to what has happened, the effect it has had and how the council didn't follow it's own rules. I think it is a really important point that the residents of LP Winns Ave voted against it and our wishes are being over run by a tiny majority who don't even live here as they packaged up all of the extension together rather than treating the new zones separately. That is one of the grounds I objected on. THey say we voted for it, but we didn't not where I live.
Still having trouble uploading pics, but will asap.
Andrea:)

Saturday 20 June 2009

another one from me,a bit off-topic!

Just a heads up for anyone who parks their car on Fleeming road,or indeed Carr/Elphinstone,I had my car broken (attempted theft of the car) into last weekend,causing £120 worth of damage,technically a write-off for the insurance,hopefully its a one off but we had a spate of break ins on the road a few years ago so please be extra careful with security.I rely on my car for work,so I'd be really stuck without it!

William Morris Safer Neighbourhoods police

Hello,this is my 1st post on here,I thought I'd help Andrea as its quite a job to maintain a blog on your own!My posts will probably be about day to day goings on in Fleeming road and the surrounding roads.

I saw the most ridiculous bit of parking in Fleeming road at school kicking out time during the week,a car was parked right across the pavement crossing point for the school,and poking out into the road,all because he couldnt park where he wanted-to me it seems that this is on the increase and is a result of the CPZ,yet I never see any traffic wardens about at this time,and this is a danger to the local children and pedestrians.

Because of this,I ended up having an interesting chat with a P.C from the William Morris Safer Neighbourhood Team Police and he told me that the team have noticed a big increase in problems in the WM area since the introduction of the CPZ on Winns Avenue-I will ring him again and see if I can get anything more official on here-it seems everyone is feeling the negative effects of the CPZ!

Friday 19 June 2009

Hello all, sorry for the absence.
Quick update - I received and acknowledgement from the Council leader about my corporate complaint confirming that it had been passed to Mark Esom to be looked into. I also heard back from the Mayors office (nothing to do with them unless it is red route related) and from the Env and Regeneration (Mark Esom's dept) saying it was being investigated by.... Tom Wright! Who is in fact the very firstperson I complained too on the 1st December 2008. Talk about round in circles! It is at stage 1 - if you aren't happy with the outcome you can ask for an independent stage 2 investigation. I can't imagine this will be dealt with fairly without bringing in people who have no face to lose. The council are too arrogant to admit they are wrong. Anyway will update as and when.
I did also receive another acknowledgement of my original objection to the plans from the Traffic Office saying it would be considered.
I have STILL had no acknowledgement from Councillor Bellam. The arrogance of that man!
If you want me to add you as a contributor/admin, please let me know. I have added Lorna already - welcome!
A

Saturday 13 June 2009

7 cars

I can't find my cable, but I have the pictures, at 11:20 today there were a total of 7 cars between the Park and Fleeming road. Vast tracts of parking unused, must be 10 percent occupancy and as a resident of the road with no car I would have to pay £5 to park a hire car, or have my brother bring my brand new nephew over, or see anyone in under 3 hours since as always the Victoria line is down all weekend.... Utterly shameful, there is no need for weekend restrictions.

Responses to letters

Hello All, I wrote a letter to Cllr Belam at the start of May outlining my issues with the CPZ and how the council has conducted itself and copied it to lots of people (cllrs reardon, gladstone, the Mayor, our london assembly member etc). In addition I made a formal complaint to the Traffic Orders Office, which is what it said to do on the notice that went in wfm magazine.
Since then I have received an acknowledgement letter from Tom Wright (I assume to the Traffic Orders letter) and this morning from the Mayors office saying unless it involves red routes they don't intervene. And that is it.

Just been outside to see how many cars are between the Park and Fleeming, photos to come....
A

Thursday 11 June 2009

Neil Herron

I think we need to contact this chap. http://neilherron.blogspot.com/

His blog goes back years - he has all sorts of knowledge, from the legalities of CPZ imposition and enforcement to clamping and road markings. It has taken over his life, he has remorgaged his home to get a Judicial Review on parking tickets.... There's lots of interesting stuff on here....

Got me thinking our eCPZ was brought in for 6 months only, we are past that period now, has a new order been put in place? I don't think it has.

Are they running an illegal CPZ in the meantime, looks like they might be. How about letter stating that they are running a CPZ without an order in place.....

Please post what you think - best wishes
A

Newpaper Articles - Waltham Forest have been in the news before....

Had a look around for some articles on the Guardian site (happened to be on there, will look in other papers too!) and found some really interesting ones. Take a look at the new links to the left - Waltham Forest get a mention for the massive hike in permit costs last year.

Did you know that in some areas all residents in the Zones get 200 hours of free visitor parking? Seems some councils are interested in their residents well being and others are only interested in the cash....

There is an email address for Rupert Jones who wrote the 2007 article - I'm happy to drop him a line and see if he would like to follow up with a piece on how Waltham Forest are now treating us.... Comments?

from the Muswell Hill 2001 article.....
"In Enfield, north London, a survey was sent to households. All people who declared that there was a local parking problem were considered to be in favour of a CPZ. In neighbouring Haringey, a survey was so confusing that, after a critical report from the district auditor and legal threats from local residents, the council decided to scrap an existing CPZ in the Bounds Green neighbourhood" (who is our district auditor? Should we find out?)

"Brophy, in Muswell Hill, recalls: "We were horrified when we found documents which showed that the council had been planning the CPZs for five years without telling anyone. They'd even worked out how much paint they needed to put on the roads and made extensive forecasts of how much profit they would make. It destroyed our faith in the council." (I think that an FOI request for this sort of thing is in order)

from the stealth tax 2007 article - we get a mention!
"This week, residents of the London borough of Waltham Forest were hit with a 50% increase in the price of their annual parking permits, and a trebling in the cost of visitor permits. Until Monday, it cost £30 a year for a resident living in a controlled area to park their car in the street; now it is £45. Meanwhile, the price of a book of 10 five-hour visitor permits has jumped from £7 to £21. That's £4.20 for one day's parking (two five-hour permits) - which adds up to a lot if, say, your mum regularly drives over to babysit while you are at work, or you regularly have tradespeople in.
A council spokesman says this is the first rise in permit costs for two years, and adds: "The vast majority of people are not covered by CPZs. The only people who are going to object to it are the people who live in those areas." So that makes it all right, then."

"But even if you don't own a car, if you live in a CPZ, you will usually still have to buy visitor permits. In some areas, less well-off residents say it means they have to ask the doctor and other callers to visit in the evening, after the restrictions have ended.

Contrast the approaches of Waltham Forest and Islington (which charges £18 for a book of 10 three-hour vouchers) with that of Sutton in Surrey, where all households within a CPZ are entitled to 200 hours of free visitor parking per year. And in Salisbury, Wiltshire, daily visitor vouchers cost just 20p each."

Tuesday 9 June 2009

Saturday, Winns Ave practically empty...again





Not sure what happened there, the pics disappeared! Here are pictures of Winns Ave between the park and Fleeming road and there are a total of 8 cars parked, on the first Saturday in June. Hardly an overwhelming need by residents for restricted parking at weekends, I wonder how many people on Fleeming and Carr could have done with one of the many many spaces free. And how many visitors didn't visit relatives, the park, local businesses, the Lloyd Park Centre etc when they would have, before this was brought in?

Monday 8 June 2009

Didn't realise I have to moderate comments before they appear, will try and do this every day. Thanks for the comments so far (hope you found that midnight parking spot!) and do feel free to post messages as well as comment. I agree that an e petition would be a good idea, we could easily set one up. Best wishes, Andrea

Saturday 6 June 2009

You have to love Liberty

"If you have suffered an injustice as a result of maladministration by a local authority, you can complain to the Local Government Ombudsman. Maladministration can include failing to receive a service to which you are entitled or suffering financial loss or distress as a consequence of something the local authority has done or has failed to do."

Well I think we can safely say that we have all suffered distress (and financial loss) as a consequence of something our local authority has done and indeed failed to do!

Stories please.

Had a great suggestion in, we can use this site to collect stories and anecdotes about how the changes have affected us. We can chose the best ones that show a range of issues for the main website.
Also please do add links to the box on the left (if you can, I think anyone can otherwise paste them into a post and I'll try and copy them over) for anything you think is interesting or relevant.
Best wishes
Andrea

Thursday 4 June 2009

While I'm looking around... petitiononline have several anti CPZ petitions http://www.petitiononline.com/NO2CPZ/petition.html this one is Cardiff, so we could look at what happened there. http://www.petitiononline.com/savewmg/petition.html save william morris gallery got over 11 thousand signatures. It is something we could think about.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2008/08/01/haringey_cpz_feature.shtml I thought this was interesting, look how honest Harringay has been over their parking surveys etc. Haven't checked on the status now yet. I think we should request the results be published by road and zone. After their denial I think that is is incredibly important that they acknowledge that the LP section of Winns Ave voted against the imposition of the zone.
So uploading photo's is a bit tricksy if you haven't done it before, sorry it is a bit of a mess, but I sent these to Cllr Belam along with a letter that I will try to upload here. Just to show how ridiculous it seems, how few residents cars need the road at weekends.


February 1st 2009









January 25th 2009






Hello world!

Hello All,
Welcome to the William Morris Parking Group blog.
We could use this as an informal place to meet and chat, update eachother on anything we have heard from the council to individual letters, or anything that isn't necessarily needed on the main site. We can upload pics and videos here if you want to share anything.
Anyway I thought we could try this out as it is and change/abandon it if people like.
Lovely to meet you all,
Andrea