Cllr West agrees to listen

Following my open letter to Cllr Catherine West, in the Islington Tribune on 19th January, I’ve exchanged a couple of emails.

The text of the Open Letter:

Subject: Open letter to Cllr Catherine West, Leader of Islington Council on Roamer Parking Scheme

Dear Councillor West

The ‘roamer’ parking scheme proposed by Islington Council will inevitably increase traffic and pollution in the borough. It will also affect all residents in and around those areas where parking controls would be weakened, not just those who have Council parking permits.

By consulting only with permit holders, the Council has failed to give all Islington residents an equal and effective say on these proposals. This is not only a matter of fairness: it also opens up the Council to the likelihood of residents challenging the scheme in the courts.

I therefore call on you and your colleagues to suspend work on the roamer scheme and run a full and open consultation of all residents, setting out all the consequences, including the negative effects on air quality, health, congestion and climate change. Given that the Council already spends a great deal of money on printing and distributing the “Islington Now” magazine to all residents, the additional cost of consulting them through the magazine as well as through the Council’s website would be minimal.

Caroline Russell, Islington Green Party Campaigns Coordinator

Councillor West responded that the aim of the scheme was “to make life easier for our residents and businesses” because  “We’ve been told time and again that relying on pay and display parking and visitor vouchers when travelling to a different zone makes it more difficult to access shops, health and leisure facilities.  It’s something that particularly impacts on carers struggling to park near the person they care for and older people who often rely on their cars to attend medical appointments.  In these tough financial times we’re also on the side of our local shops and businesses, who have asked for reduced parking restrictions to help their customers.”

She then addressed the issue of consultation: “Your email requests that we suspend the proposals and carry out further consultation.  The scheme was first approved by Executive on 21 October, and since that time there has been information on our www.islington.gov.uk website, letters sent to all 36000 permit holders and a number of articles and letters in the local press.  We’ve heard from over 300 residents, mainly from the north of the borough, and as a result of comments received we’ve changed the proposed hours of operation for the scheme to 11am-3pm.  This time change is now open for consultation until 11 February and, as well as featuring on our website, it will be on the front page of the Jan-Feb issue of Islington Life which all residents are about to receive.” Concluding that in the current financial climate “I believe it would be absolutely inappropriate to spend many thousands of pounds on even more consultation“.

I wrote back, disagreeing  that the scheme is the best way either to help carers or to support local businesses.  On the contrary, it appears to be aimed at the minority of residents who own cars (by definition not those living in poverty), granting them additional flexibility to add to the congestion and poor air quality on our streets.

I raised the Council’s Parking Policy , which is Islington specific, encourages modal shift to active travel modes including public transport and is aimed to balance the needs of all Islington residents.  The policy was recently reviewed by the Sustainability Review Committee, chaired by Cllr Wally Burgess which reported back in March 2010.  Looking through the final report , in the list of eighteen recommendations, I can see no mention of any issues suggesting the need to expand either the number of visitor vouchers available or the flexibility of permits.  I suggested that the newly identified issue, raised at the Executive, of “current parking zones preventing vulnerable people accessing the borough’s resources” could have been addressed with additional visitor voucher allocation for carers without giving the message to all drivers that it’s ok to make short trips by car in our desperately congested borough.

In terms of consultation it is unfortunate that the Council changed the policy  principle in October with no attempt to canvas opinion from either statutory consultees or the community.  It is telling to note that of all the (331) responses from the drivers consulted in December, only eight were in favour of the scheme.  The current consultation on the hours of operation may draw forth further comment on the broader principle of whether Islington should encourage short trips by car through its parking regime.  In the light of this, while I agreed with Cllr West that the expense of a further consultation would be inappropriate, I asked for assurance that she will “seize the opportunity, offered by the latest consultation, to collate the data not just on the hours of operation but also on responses to the scheme overall.”  This maximises her chance to listen to residents, without incurring unnecessary additional expense.

Councillor West responded with an assurance that “officers are collating all the responses received to the consultation“, which mean that we are able to let the Council know what we think both about the change of hours (subject of the current consultation) and more importantly what we feel about the scheme overall and any negative impacts on air quality, congestion and road safety, so  do please take the opportunity to respond by 11th February.