You said you didn’t want it, we did it anyway

In a seemingly desperate move to keep the Barnet parking control empire ticking over and expanding stealthily, Barnet Council have announced the imposition of an unwanted controlled parking zone in just part of the originally planned location that will be known as Underhill South and will cost £85K.

The Council acknowledged that the informal parking engagement revealed that support for the introduction of a US CPZ in the full engagement area was low.

One letter went out to people in the affected area and another one went out to those who have escaped for the moment.

Battling against clear opposition in the area, the Council has demonstrated its ability to engage in mission creep and doing exactly what it has said that it wanted to avoid - taking a piecemeal approach, kicking the issue to the next street and creating further displacement on the edges.

Clutching at straws, the Council found 16 roads in a cluster where they have added the people who always and sometimes have parking issues and found that it was two-thirds of the people in these roads.  However, the Council have glossed over the fact that even in this area more than 6 in ten people didn’t want a controlled parking zone.

We foresaw that the Council might decide to split up the area.  We also foresaw that the Council might ride roughshod over the expressed wish of residents.  Rather than doing this for the whole area, the Council has picked off part of the area with a little less resistance.

We are heartened to know that 85% of residents didn’t want restrictions even if their neighbours had them.

It is noteworthy that in the Council decision there appears to be a contradiction.  On the one hand, paragraph 7.18 of the decision report says that shorter CPZs are generally introduced to prevents all day commuter parking, but then in paragraph 9.1 officers admit that "feedback from the Underhill informal parking engagement has indicated that there is parking issues associated with commuter parking…”

There is an inconsistency in what kind of parking officers say the zone is intended to deal with.  It appears that the longer hours are a preference of officers (not of residents) without fully thought through rationale.  The Council says that parking in the area would be commuter parking but that a shorter CPZ wouldn’t be suitable?  It doesn’t entirely make sense and no substantial evidence is provided regarding the benefit of long hour operation of the CPZ in this entirely residential area.   

55% of the 82 in the selected area didn’t agree with the hours proposed. 

Indeed, it is laughable the extent to which the Council has simply ignored feedback, including regarding shorter hours being preferred.  If this is ignored, is there any point in people feeding into the subsequent 18-month consultation?

It is also a concern that certain responses to the consultation have seemingly been disregarded, for example Whitings School.  Even though it’s not in the proposed area, it will be affected.

Remember the talk of demand from businesses?   The selected area has no responses from businesses, according to the Council's own data.

Officers’ assertion that "NHS Trusts are primarily responsible for managing and setting their own hospital parking arrangements" would have more weight were it not for the fact that residents are being asked to pay up for the parking implications of this.  Unless we are being asked to accept that it’s just a coincidence that it’s that particular corner of the area?

Council officers have provided no evidence whatsoever that there would only be a small impact on elderly residents as a result of the introduction of the controlled parking zone.  We have received reports of concerns over increased isolation for older people.

If you are a resident of the planned new Underhill South Controlled Parking Zone or if you have escaped it for just now, you can always send a vote of thanks to Cllr Alan Schneiderman, who signed off on the passing of powers to officers.  You can also contact our councillors Cllr. Beg and Cllr Roberts (although it seems as though Cllr. Schneiderman has handed all the powers to bureaucrats with very little oversight).

In our opinion, the experimental trial zone is virtually meaningless – the zone will undoubtedly be a permanent feature and officers are likely to pay lip service to most comments made.

Let us know if you live in the area that will remain in the zone and have any comments.