Council response

Response sent to lead petitioner 18/4/17
The petition has 21 signatures from 42 properties and although this is 50% of the street and not over 50% that the Council’s criteria requires, the traffic team will now seek the judgement of the relevant elected decision-maker, the Cabinet Member for Environment, as to whether the council should proceed with its own CPZ consultation exercise later in 2017. This step is necessary to verify the levels of support within Nelson Road.

Any zonal parking restriction will lead to parking being displaced onto surrounding streets. Should Nelson Road end up within a zone, some of its residents will no doubt then elect to park their vehicles in other streets rather than buying a permit, as you report is currently done by residents of streets adjoining your own. In the absence of zonal restrictions, every driver has an equal right to park at the side of the public road, whether they live in the street, or in an adjoining zone or somewhere else entirely. Whilst noting the inconvenience posed by a scarcity of parking space (particularly to those returning home with children or shopping), it is worth remembering that a third of households in the borough do not own a car at all. Also that the responsibility for finding suitable storage space for such vehicles lies, ultimately, with their owners, not the council.

A similar consultation exercise was undertaken recently across the area south of Bounces Road in response to similar petitions received from Westoe Road, Harton Road and Gordon Road. However, the overall response rate was low and did not match the levels of support indicated by the earlier petitioning. This reflects a tendency for residents to be less positive about the idea of a CPZ when the drawbacks are set out fully. These drawbacks include:

Regulations require that every section of road in a CPZ has to have a control in place: either a parking bay or yellow line. The layout of formal parking bays may reduce the total amount of parking spaces available. Single yellow lines placed across driveways or crossovers mean that residents cannot park across their own drives during the operational times. Residents have to pay for permits for their vehicles and their visitors. The current annual charge for a small hatchback in an all-day zone is £110 per year, but the cost is higher for larger vehicles.

Given that the exercise around Westoe Road, Harton Road and Gordon Road area did not confirm clear support, there are some concerns that the same is likely to be found for Nelson Road, which is a similar distance from the retail centre and the station. Although it does have the added parking pressure due to the garage premises in Wellington Avenue. CPZs offer most benefit when the proportion of commuter/shopper parking is high. If most of the parking demand is due to a surplus of vehicles owned within the street then a CPZ may do little to help. A consultation exercise should help establish this more clearly.

Finally, assuming that the Cabinet Member provides the necessary funding to conduct the initial consultation , it is hoped to add Nelson Road to other requests for resident parking in the Borough. The Council will then engage consultants to conduct the consultation on Nelson Road with the other areas. However the Council must conduct an exercise to obtain the Best Value for the consultation through a framework agreement. This enables various companies to bid for the work, thereby enabling the Council to appoint the services of the consultant at a competitive price.

Consequently I hope you understand that this process can take some time before a consultant is appointed and the necessary documents can be drafted and agreed, and they can be distributed to your road. Hopefully this will take place before the Summer holidays.