Lorna's story

I think it would be a fab idea if we could get a selection of residents to post their stories on here,you can email us or leave a comment and we'll make it into a post.

I live on Fleeming road,and in the 8 years or so I've lived here this is the worst the parking has ever been-obviously it has got busier over the years but the dramatic increase in vehicles parked on Fleeming when the CPZ was my first warning of the CPZ been introduced.

Parking could always sometimes be tricky,but I could usually always park in my own road if I came back from work before midnight and as a shift worker,I return home at various times,so I think I can say with some accuracy that the parking is at best difficult at anytime of the day now,even returning from supermarket shopping during the day its nearly always impossible to park anywhere near my home.And returning from work in the early hours usually means I have to park in Elphinstone or Pennant Terrace (sorry residents!)-just what I need after a 16 hour shift!

I have also noticed an increase in commercial vans parked in the road,and cars that are parked in the same spot for weeks on end,leaving the residents not able to move their cars into view of their flats.This is important to me as my car was broken into recently,and I feel that this may have been due to the fact it was parked out of my sight-before CPZ I always parked or moved my car to outside my flat for security,and my neighbours knew it was my car if there were any problems.
For me the answer would be to get rid of the CPZ-you only have to look at Winns Avenue to see how few people park there,I am sure that many of those residents park in Carr and Fleeming roads,and I dont blame them with the price of the permits!Why should the people who live in Carr/Fleeming and Elphinstone be so disadvantaged by a CPZ that it seems the few voted for?Why arent CPZ permits free per household anyway-and charge the people who drive in to work in the area to park instead,as far as I can see this is a pure money making scheme,if it was only to solve the parking problem surely the permits would be free?

Winns Photos explanation

Just quickly, the top 2 are Tues 14th, the next 2 down are Weds 15th and the last 2 are today Sunday 26th. I can't get back in to edit it so they line up properly with the captions. Sorry :)

Some more photos for you....of Winns Ave

Tuesday the 14th July 9 cars between the Park and Fleeming at 7 in the morning

Wednesday 15th July 11 cars between the Park and Fleeming 8pm

Sunday 26 th July 7 cars between the Park and Fleeming mid afternoon

From Traci

Being on Carr Road, we are also victims of the zoned parking overflow. Even the delivery people complain. It feels like we have all the second cars people don't want to bother with permits for on our street. We finally solved our problem by selling our car, but that's a luxury many people can't afford.

From Sandy, sorry I couldn't copy the clever pictures!


HI
Our house pay for permit parking because it lets us park close to our house which helps as both of us have health problems and accept that to do this will cost us each year.
I understand the frustration many residents feel about permit parking and they way it pushes those that don't have or will not pay for a permit to move to non permit streets. For years we suffered from that very problem and even asked the council if we could pay for permit parking on a near by street to which they said no. If permit parking was removed from our street then we would once again be forced to park up the side streets taking one of the locals parking space. It seems that no matter what way this is viewed, someone will lose out. I also accept though, that permit parking is part of living in a big city like London and not likely to change.

Fiona's story

Fiona,I thought I would post your email as is.

I’m sorry to hear the new parking restrictions have been causing such problems.

You may not want to hear this, but I wanted to say that I voted in favour of the parking restrictions, as it had become impossible to park on my street (I’m now it the LP zone), or anywhere near my street. Coming back from the car with shopping and a small child was impossible. I’ve lived in my flat for 6 years and there never used to be a problem, but probably in the last year or so parking had become a real headache. Apparently parking restrictions were introduced the other side of Forest Road, which pushed more cars on to our and neighbouring roads. It seems that the same problem has now been pushed onto the area outside the new zone.

Clearly the new parking restrictions have caused problems for others – for us, personally, it’s been a dramatic improvement, as we can now park outside our flat - and we need to find a solution for this. It seems to me that parking for the wider area needs to be assessed – there’s no point getting rid of the new parking zone, unless you do the same for the one the other side of Forest Road (and potentially the one next to them, which is presumably why they needed one). Hopefully there are some transport and planning experts around which can help with this.

On the positive side, I see that a carshare scheme has just been introduced in Waltham Forest. This may mean that some local people will not buy a car, but use the car share instead, which should relieve some of the parking pressure.

It would be good to know what you are campaigning for i.e. what do you want the Council to do about it? Apologies if this is on the site, but I couldn’t find it.

Many thanks and best of luck.

Fiona

It's not just the shop owners at the park....

Hello All,
I went out this evening and posted a few leaflets through the doors of the LP section of Winns Ave down to the shop at Mersey Road. And on the windscreens of cars with visitor permits in.

The lovely chap who runs the shop on the corner of Mersey (and I'll be taking him laminates in the morning) this very day got a ticket while on business in the shop (on top of what they pay for the bay) and he told me of a Mersey resident, with a permit, who has been clamped (thats over £250 apparently, which I was amazed by the council are raking it in). He had made the mistake of parking in the shops bay, on Mersey Road. Not that the shop owner minded, but rules are of course rules.

I'll try and do another stretch tomorrow night and I'll post any stories here. Enjoying talking to the shop owners, what a lovely bunch:)
Best wishes,
Andrea

PS I received a reply to my email to Bob Belam! 3rd time lucky. No sign that he had actually read the email, but progress nontheless.

Hi Fiona, you are very welcome to post on here the more the merrier.

All WMparking is about is finding out what the issues are and trying to work out an equitable way forward. We aren't campaigning for anything in particular, just for the council to take account of all views (Winns Ave LP voted against for eg.) and to work out something that works better than it does currently for a lot of people in and around the zone.

My issue for example is that I too live in the LP zone and it is desperately inconvenient and costly - I don't own a car and it'll cost me £156 a year for my boyfriend and family to visit occasionally when it only costs £45 for a car owner to park all year round. I don't think that non-car owning resident are being treated fairly and am shocked at how few cars there are on Winns Ave at the weekends. Others on Winns Ave have relatives come for daily childcare, medical care and it is costing them a fortune. So my particular bug bear is I think that if you don't have a car you should be able to have a transferable permit (allocated to your address) for the same cost as a car owner, to have the convenience and cost effectiveness that car owners have.

Others (from the surrounding roads who were not even consulted) have the issues of crowding you mention along with many others, arguements between neighbours, an increase in car crime, impossible deliveries etc. So that is what we are about - and we welcome those in favour too! - we are about trying to find a better way forward for everyone.

Welcome! (and if you would like to post, just say and I can "invite you" and you can post rather than comment:)
Best wishes,
Andrea

WMCPAG needs YOU!!

Hopefully you will be reading this as a result of recieving a flyer that was distributed over the weekend,if so-welcome!
A laminated poster for residents to fix to their gate or show in their window is in the process of being produced by WMCPAG and we particulary would like to hear from residents in Fleeming and Elphinstone roads and Winns Avenue as we are short of WMCPAG contacts in those roads to help with distributing and displaying the posters.
If you are interested in helping or would like to attend any future meetings,then please leave a comment or send an email to wmorrisparking@btinternet.com-you can be involved as little or as much as you feel comfortable with and this is your chance to voice your concerns at the negative affect that the CPZ has on WM residents.

William Morris Ward Panel results

Myself,Andrea and Nick attended the William Morris Ward Panel meeting on Tuesday and I thought I would post the analysis of the 3 priorities as set by the Ward Panel from the SNT,as you can see not all of it is strictly relevant to WMCPAG,but as we are all residents it may be of interest to you anyway.

The SNT were very helpful in answering the questions we had and it was worth going to obtain information,even if it was an 'experience'!I think it was John at the WMCPAG who mentioned that the council were checking the number plates of cars parked in and around Fleeming road,Carr road and Elphinstone road and I asked this at the meeting and realised pretty quickly that the councillors were very protective of their methods.I asked on what authority they checked the numbers to obtain information and how was it a reasonable use of that authority?The answer I was given was that they were checking where the car owners lived-was it in the area or outside etc,which to me was not a reasonable excuse to access private information,especially as its not actually an offence/parking offence to park in these roads,regardless of how annoying and frustrating it is!This would have made more sense at the deciding stage of the CPZ rather than now in my opinion.

The SNT said that the kind of car crime they were seeing was surprisingly theft of number plates and theft from cars rather than theft of car and that had increased in the time the CPZ had been in force,whether this was due to crime being condensed because of the sheer numbers of cars attracting thieves to the said roads or for other reasons they weren't totally sure,but we all agreed that it may also be that people arent moving their cars for longer periods now and they are also parking them out of sight rather than being able to park or move their cars to outside their homes so that it was in sight or in neighbours sight.They also mentioned that they were planning on holding a vehicle crime awareness van (sorry I cant recall all the details) soon in Lloyd Park-I'll post details on here when I have them.
I hope this isn't going off topic but I do think its a symptom of the hated CPZ!


The next Ward Panel meeting is to be held on 15th September 2009 at The William Morris Community Centre on Greenleaf road (Hoe st end) and anyone who is resident in the area is welcome to attend.