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Living with CPZ creep
• COUNCILLOR Lucy Watt excuses the sharp rise in ticketing on the increase in car parking zones (CPZs) and the opening of the Emirates Stadium, but both are the direct result of council policies.
Blanket coverage of Islington and the adjoining boroughs with CPZs has been achieved only through a war of attrition fought over the last seven years using “CPZ creep”, the strategic starting of CPZs where they would seed surrounding areas with displaced parking to create demand where none would naturally exist.
Where residents have resisted they have then been required to “do a Denmark” and keep voting until they got the “right” answer.
Had the council not wanted to use the opportunity provided by the development of the Emirates Stadium to extend the hours of parking control then they could have used an agreement under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to set up a scheme whereby match tickets for those who don’t have an address in the same or an adjoining postal district could only be sold together with the appropriate travel arrangements.
Legislation requires that local authorities proposing to introduce measures to control parking on streets should have regard to the availability of alternative parking off-street but, beyond allowing residents to pave over their gardens, this provision has been ignored, leaving visiting rights for relatives and friends of Islington’s inmates limited to 10 full days a year. We can hope that, if ever the CPZs cease to run at a profit, they will be withdrawn but in the meantime if the council really wants to move towards a more resident-friendly regime, then it could re-consult all the zones that don’t already have two-hour zones to see whether they would prefer to be patrolled for only the two hours per day necessary to discourage commuters.
If each zone were patrolled for different hours then a reduced workforce of wardens could cover the same ground, the cost savings passed on and residents really would be helped “get on with their everyday lives”.
CHRIS GRAHAM
Tollington Park, N4
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