Haringey to remove daily visitor parking permits

Haringey Council is consulting on making changes to parking rules in CPZs - including scrapping daily visitor permits, forcing residents to use more expensive hourly permits; and introducing pay and display charges for electric vehicle charging spaces - seemingly even if the space falls within a CPZ area the resident has a permit for. The consultation closes on 20th November.

Currently daily permits cost £5 per day, but buying enough hourly permits to cover CPZ hours will cost up to £17 per day depending where you are in the borough - a 240% increase, with the hardest hit places being some of the areas with the highest levels of deprivation in Haringey.

Respond to the consultation here

Labour-run Haringey Council claims that the reason for the daily visitors parking permit removal is that "circumstantial evidence suggests daily visitor permits are open to being used for purposes other than intended" (though under questioning from Lib Dem opposition councillors, have never been able to say what this evidence is, or provide detail of it).

In response to questioning from Lib Dem councillors the Lead Cabinet Member replied: “We need to get value out of our land.” In other words, a straightforward cash grab, masquerading as tackling an issue with parking misuse.

Under the current system, a daily visitor permit costs £5, whilst an hourly visitor permit costs £1.20. In any CPZ which is operational more than 4 hours a day, the proposals will make it more expensive to buy a day's parking for a visitor.  And the longer the hours of operation, the greater that increase in expense will be, with parts of Wood Green and Tottenham - where CPZ hours run from early morning until late into the evening - heavily affected.

Despite claiming that the removal of the permit is to tackle misuse, no alternative solutions have ever been presented or consulted on, such as limiting the number of daily visitor permits for those that appear to be purchasing a very high number, or those that appear to use the permits for extended periods of time or with specific patterns (such as always on event days).

The council has also not put forward any reasoning for the introduction of pay and display charges for vehicles using an Electric Vehicle Charging Point (EVCP) bay to charge their vehicle, beyond it increasing turnover of the bays - without evidencing this as an issue - but the fact the policy does not appear to allow exemptions for those using an EVCP within their own CPZ freely would be especially punishing.

This would mean an additional surcharge for electric vehicle owners living within a CPZ charging their vehicles in bays on their own road or surrounding roads, despite many residents not having the ability to charge their vehicle at home. This seems to go against the national environmental push for a transition towards electric vehicles and away from petrol/diesel.

We would encourage you to review the consultation, and respond to any of the proposed changes listed.