Residents parking permits – the next installment!

Mar 16th, 2010 | By admin | Category: Parking

An independent commission, set up to shape the future of car parking in South Tyneside appears to have largely ignored the views of the vast majority of people in the Borough particularly in relation to residents parking permits. The commission’s report will be presented to the council’s decision making cabinet (made up solely of Labour councillor’s) on Wednesday 17th March and the message will be more of the same please, but it will now be repackaged !

It’s clear that the much heralded ‘independent’ commission was nothing more than an exercise in spin and that it’s ‘findings’ are a direct result of council officers(under pressure from senior Labour councillors) cleverly guiding the commission in the right direction so that the council can achieve the result it wants whilst allowing the Labour party to claim that it has listened to the people.

The commission on car parking charges and permit parking took five months to complete and has made 25 individual ‘recommendations’ which the council claims reflect the views of those that contributed. We will be publishing all 25 of the commission’s recommendations on our website shortly. However, this article deals with the controversial issue of residents parking permits.

The commission acknowledges that residents are unhappy (no surprise there then) about having to pay for a permit to park in their own streets, however, it also acknowledges that their is a cost for enforcing residents parking schemes which it estimates at £20. The commission therefore recommended that the proposed £50 charge be reduced to £20.

It also recommends that free short stay permits should be issued to health and care workers visiting residents and to small businesses i.e. builders, plumbers joiners etc who are registered with the council’s safe trader scheme.

However, the main recommendation i.e. reduce the annual fee from £50 to £20 has now been amended following a request by senior Labour councillors. The revised proposal is to charge £50 for the first year which will then be reduced to £20 in the second year. The £50 is to reflect the initial cost of setting up the scheme.

The council fails to mention the fact that a number of schemes are already in existence and therefore require very little ‘setting up’ nor is there any mention of how long the council will keep the £20 charge for. They also fail to mention what the charges for a second or third permit will be or indeed the cost of visitor permits.

In fact after five months of deliberations it seems the commission’s findings raise more questions than it answers and it’s clear that the Labour run council is determined to press ahead with introducing a charge for permit parking despite what the people of South Tyneside think.

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2 comments
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  1. david March 24th, 2010 8:09 am :

    I worked in the parking office in Thomas st and how does the permits cost so much? The info is put into the computer and the permit printed. 2 mins work. Obviously permits for the whole borough would take longer but not 50 quid per car longer. So would the money go towards paying the CEOs that have to go and patrol those streets, nope. How many of these streets would ever be patrolled? probably not many so are the permits even needed.

  2. ian greener June 30th, 2010 3:24 pm :

    Living on a council estate ,that when built some of the houses were not built with driveways to park vehicles on . However , over the years some council tenants who have bought there own homes have adapted their property , without planning permission and built driveways, often to the inconvienance of others. Will these former tenants be exempt from residential parking permits when parking on the road adjacent to their drive ? will they be exempt when they park on their drives ? and will other residents , who have been inconvienanced over the years to accomodate this adaptation , be prosecuted if they now park obstructing these driveways, now that they are residential permit holders in order to park near their homes ?

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