CPZ Parking

In an effort to ease street parking l have a suggestion. All street parking should be under a CPZ the difference to the current policy is that each house would be allocated one free car permit with registration number. A second car permit would be £250/annum. This would serve to reduce the parking issues, would not cause problems for low income families (as opposed to current scheme that charges for all cars).
Permits for visitors can be provided say 12 free and then a book of 12 sold for £10.00.
I would be interested to read comments specifically those against as I can see no negatives.

Where is the funding for this huge CPZ coming from?

Does it cost a lot to implement such a scheme? Presumably it generates enough cash for the council to make it worth while. I would welcome it if it were based on Wynell’s suggestions - sick and tired of out of town commuters clogging up our roads in HOP during the week and increasingly at the weekend resulting in having to park quite a distance from my home as a result - particularly frustrating when I have a load of stuff to load or unload. The problem has become worse as the popularity and frequency of the Overground and our public transport connections have improved in recent years.

Yes, I think it does. The enforcement requires labour and that costs.

If the focus is to counter park and ride, I think efforts to improve local transport connections would make more sense. Re HOP, there is no direct connection between the station and Peckham, East Dulwich or Catford. I would suggest that most of the park and ride comes from these areas but that is purely anecdotal. Didn’t the council commission a study on this?

Whilst the proposal above seems fair at first glance, the issue is trusting the council to keep the terms the same long-term which hasn’t been the experience in other boroughs.

Perhaps a guarsntee period of say 5 years, after all the first csr would be free. As for costs the issue of a label and a database should not cost that much, there are small companies on this site that could bid for the work and you would only need one warden to manage it as neighbours etc would be keen to report transgressions!
If you had 300 2nd car payments (not unreasonable) that would be £75,000.00/annum probably enough to pay for a warden and the multi layers of council management.

I will keep it on topic, it’s hard to estimate the costs without being in the council and suspect they could spend 75k on the RFP alone to prove its fairly allocated.
Running costs when taking into account pensions, sick pay, holiday pay and ensuring enough cover will also add up quickly etc etc

Not unworkable just challenges

The council did a consultation of sorts, and I believe it was stopped after that.

My understanding is that a CPZ has to be self funding. I can see why people near the station might want it, then people further out would want it so it would likely end up relatively big. I much prefer the CPZ where the charge is just for 12-2, so easy for people visiting (friends \ trades people etc), but deters commuters just leaving their car all day. My parents have a CPZ Mon-Fri, even over Christmas holidays - I hate it and it makes it awkward, but they have started allowing some day passes.

My suggestion was that day passes be included and this works well in Newham where the first car is free along with 30 passes. Further passes are available for a £15 fee for another 30.
Second etc car is I believe £200 also cars must be registered at the address and in name of resident, it works well and as previously mentioned it should be self funding and with council tax and the electoral role linked along with HMRC the management will be easy to manage.

II am not against cars but charged CPZs tend to be good at getting rid of unused cars. A friend rarely drove his car as he had good public transport but sold it as he found it was costing him a few pounds per mile with tax, insurance and the cpz charge and doesn’t miss it now. Look on most local streets and you will see some cars parked for months in the same spot, many of them eyesores. More will follow with the ULEZ north of the south circular. Charging though unpopular is used to control the car population and subsequent pollution. I do own a car but I suspect there is more chance of Lewisham turning blue than a free CPZ with your council tax. A CPZ would increase the value of my house much more than £120 per year even if I have to pay it for 20 years and increase the quality of my Street with less pollution and noise.

The CPZ concept in general is no bad thing - but only if it is adequately policed and enforced.

A friend of mine who lives up in Essex has a CPZ on his and surrounding streets, but there is still a problem with non-residents parking in it (to get to the nearby station), because the local bush telegraph has let it be known that parking wardens are rarely (if ever) patrolling the area.

Paying £££s a year for the privilege of having access to parking zones is fine - paying the same and still facing a daily lottery due to uncontrolled abusive parking is not!

Whilst I have off-street parking so this issue seems academic, I’m generally not in favour of a CPZ because a) the “deal” you do with the authorities only lasts as long as the person who agreed it is still in post (usually weeks, not years) and b) if it is successful and reduces on-street parking, traffic speeds will rise as a consequence. A friend of mine in Ruislip experienced this as a CPZ was introduced and as most residents have off-street parking, the street soon emptied and within months residents were lobbying the council for speed controls.

Also, the ticket system for visitors is a proper pain in the backside. I’d honestly rather pay and display on-street than try and track down little books of tickets.

There is currently no CPZ in Wynell Road, Mayow Rd and most surrounding streets. If MH believes that parking on both sides of the road acts as a speed restriction then I have to strongly disagree.
Keeping to hand a book of visitor tickets for occassional use cannot be difficult? Perhaps in the Kitchen ‘man drawer’
As for enforcement I believe as in vehicle duty one clamped car results in several others disappearing/sold within days.

I would agree, we have speed bumps which restrict speeds, the congested parking leads to speeding as people end up queuing for spaces frustrating people who just want to drive down the road.

Parking across driveways is rarely enforced in Lewisham but tends to work as long as there is no parking pressure.

As part of its draft budget, Lewisham Council is proposing to introduce new controlled parking zones in the borough. This appears to be one of a range of measures to offset some of the cuts that the council needs to make.

The article is unspecific on whether this would likely affect only some or all streets. It wouldn’t happen immediately though - it is stated that the proposal could be implemented from August 1, 2023.

Interestingly I thought it was the case that councils weren’t allowed to consider parking charges as part of their planned income i.e. that income could not be used to offset spending and balance the budget.

Also from the Local Government Association ‘councillor’s workbook on local government
finance’:

I’m not entirely sure a CPZ is the same as car-parking described above, or perhaps things have changed. Covid has changed a lot of things, and after Croydon council went bust last week, I guess other councils have to look at all options for funding.

It sounds a bit like the all Lewisham CPZ that seems to come up every few years. They normally sell it on the basis that Lewisham is subsidising commuter pollution and has the most free parking beside stations but it would be hard to get acceptance from voters. Lewisham has comparatively small numbers of controlled parking streets considering it is an inner London borough.

It would probably be better at achieving borough wide pollution reduction than blocking some streets. CPZs tend to remove parking as it becomes cheaper to walk, cycle or take the bus whereas LTNs just shift it around. The normal argument against CPZs is that it shifts the parking to the next street but if it was borough wide this wouldn’t happen.

It is not going to happen though as I can’t see Labour doing it. It would be seen as a tax on all Lewisham residents who drive especially the poorest who can’t afford to change their cars and subsequently will have to pay the most for a permit.

On the revenue front, it should be a lot cheaper to run an all borough CPZ than the current 20-30 and could make use of modern technology. The council always tell us that CPZs rarely make money probably because they can’t be bothered to enforce it but perhaps the Hither Green LTN cameras have changed their mind.

This issue was raised at a recent Council Overview and Scrutiny meeting. Here is the response, which provides an overview of the current policy:

In the current parking policy, which was updated in January 2020, the Council has
committed to an annual programme of controlled parking zone (CPZ) consultations. CPZs are designed to protect residents and businesses from high demand for parking, with existing CPZs in Lewisham mainly concentrated around major destinations, such as town centres, railway stations and the hospital. Requests for new CPZs are prioritised by key criteria including the impact of existing CPZs and other transport projects that may affect parking, such as the upcoming expansion in 2021 to the Ultra-Low Emission Zone, publicrequests and new developments in the area.

A borough-wide review of CPZs was expected to take place this financial year to inform the forward programme, but both this review and the completion of the existing CPZ programme are currently paused due to the pandemic. The Council is intending to restart this process and progress the agreed review.

The roll out of future CPZs will generally be informed by public consultation results and be delivered in line with the Council’s agreed policies and objectives. However, the policy does make provision for new or amended CPZs that are required urgently in response to extraordinary or acute issues around safety or access, in which case the CPZ programme may be amended in consultation with the Executive Director for Housing, Regeneration and Public Realm. Also, where significant parking problems are predicted as a result of significant levels of development, or transport projects, a presentation of evidence and specific solutions will be considered on a case by case basis, to be approved by Mayor and Cabinet. This may include consultation with residents to influence the design of the CPZ, but not on whether a zone will be implemented.