The battle over Hackney’s CPZs continues with Cllr Feryal Demirci, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods describing the R Zone consultation as, “a right cock up”.
At the Council’s monthly public meeting on Wednesday 30 January 2013, R Zone campaigners supported resident Gary Malcolm as he delivered a succinct 5 min deputation into the catalogue of errors involved in the CPZ process.
Holding the mandate of 300 signatures, a petition signed by residents that opposed the CPZ, he explained that the process was flawed as the council failed to follow: The Councils Constitution, Mayors Delegated authority, Scheme of Delegated Authority, Parking & Enforcement Policy (PEP and amended August 2011), Case Law - The Sedley Test / Gunning Principle, Consultation Charter, Consultation Guidelines, Equal Opportunities Policy, Traffic Management Act 2004 and Local Authorities' Traffic Orders (Procedure) (England and Wales), etc.
In responding to the deputation, Cllr Demirci acknowledged that the process had been, “a right cock up”, but intriguingly went on to defend some of the practises as, “We analyse consultation responses road by road and have done so for the past 9 years. Every CPZ consultation we have done to date, we have done so in this way.”
What is clear from the Cllr’s response, is that the deputation has illuminated not only the flaws in this particular CPZ consultation but brings into question Hackney’s nine years of implementing CPZs.
Furthermore, when the Cllr went on to dismiss R Zone’s signed petition as, “The council does not accept petitions as we can not verify what was said to residents to obtain those signatures…,” a statement that went unchallenged by the meetings’ Chair, this suggest serious concerns with how Cllr are representing their constituents. For example, this statement undermines the fundamental principles of England’s entire democratic process - as signing a petition is a tool for the ordinary person to speak to their government when all other channels have been made unavailable.
In recognition of the cock up, Cllr Demirci did suggest undertaking a further consultation of 21 days, “I will provide another 21 day consultation to all residents asking whether they want a CPZ, providing them with proposed timings and costs… and this will give residents another opportunity to have their say on whether or not to adopt the proposed CPZ.”
Although the stand down was welcomed, it appears these actions are both unprecedented and they also appear to fall outside of the Parking Enforcement Plan (PEP) and the consultation’s official processes. In fact a further consultation would merely reaffirm one of the many alleged failings Mr Malcolm had already put to Cllr Demirci.
Victoria Park’s CPZ consultation also appears to be on hold and like relationships within the R Zone, that consultation has also driven a wedge between the thriving community. Business owners and residents appear in disagreement into how to manage their car parking capacity needs. In that case Hackney council undertook public meetings in but then failed to have any mechanisms available to capture residents’ opposition to the CPZ. In summary, that meeting presented as a public relations exercise with the sole aim of selling the CPZ to the area.
Although vehemently denied by Hackney - that CPZ are simply a money making venture, it appear that when challenged to explore alternative parking capacity tools, Cllrs claim the CPZ process dictates that such discussion cannot be held while a consultation is underway. These legal arguments continue to obstruct residents from discussing the range of other capacity tools that are available to manage parking capacity which means their decisions to elect for a CPZ may be because they believe there is no alternative.
What is clear is that the R Zone campaigners are made up of a caring bunch of individual residents and business owners who genuinely want to address parking capacity; however, there is also a growing awareness that CPZs should only be used as a last resort and only after the other parking capacity tools have been applied.
For example, it may well be that opening the underground car park in the R Zone area - where it appears there are about 30 to 60 parking spaces, this would ease both Jenner and Benthal Road’s parking pinch point. Similarly turning Jenner into a one way with diagonal parking would also increase the road’s capacity.
An awareness that a minority of residents are completely fed up with not being able to park close to their home, has seen the R Zone campaigners organising a community ‘Pow Wow’. This meeting is intended for all residents to hear about the range of alternative parking capacity tools that are available to R Zone residents. Given that Hackney has had nine years of implementing CPZ on an allegedly ‘cocked up’ process, other Hackney residents from other areas may also wish to attend.
The Pow Wow aims to explore how to change the paying CPZ into a system that directly improves the community’s relationships with cars and parking. The Pow Wow meeting date and time will be posted on lamp posts in the area as well as being advertised on their facebook page: R Zone against CPZ
Teena
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