Yarm parking tax promises chaos...

Last Thursday, Stockton Council's Labour / Ingleby Barwick 'independents' coalition agreed to push ahead with their ill-conceived plans to impose their unwanted parking tax in Yarm.

Stockton Council would have us believe that they are doing this for the benefit of Yarm, both by addressing the congestion problems through Yarm High Street and by boosting visitor numbers thereby benefitting trade.  Yes, you read that right - Stockton Council believe that by taxing visitors to the town, more will want to come. Presumably in the same way as increasing rail fares persuades more of us to travel by train...

At least one Labour politician was sufficiently honest/careless to announce the real reason for the Council's plans...

But all this has been said before.  Were the risks to businesses on the High Street not sufficiently obvious as to constitute common sense, the press coverage has been considerable.

One area that has been less well publicised is the effect that the parking tax will have on residents living in the streets and wynds in close proximity to the High Street.

Whilst the eye was inevitably drawn to the paragraphs relating directly to charging in the report presented to cabinet last Thursday, there is one towards the end of the report which merits closer scrutiny:

"There will be a need to bring forward a range of parking restrictions to address existing indiscriminate parking and to manage the inevitable displacement that will occur as a result of introducing charging".

In other words, at the same time as implementing their parking tax Stockton Council intend to take Yarm back to the future with the reintroduction of their 2010/11 plans to swathe large parts of the town with double yellow lines and other parking restrictions, particularly along West Street.

There is no denying that there is ostensibly a need for some additional restrictions along West Street - anybody familiar with the area will be aware of the selfish and downright dangerous actions of some motorists, particularly those parking under the viaduct at the Bentley Wynd end of West Street - but only a fool would neither anticipate nor fear the promised proposals being virtually a carbon copy of the plans kicked into the long grass by the Council in 2011.

Not only will we see the "inevitable displacement" of vehicles as a direct consequence of the parking tax (and not just from the High Street - charging is also intended for the two SBC car parks, at The Old Market and Castle Dyke Wynd), but if the promised parking restrictions prove to be as draconian as intended previously, further displacement of vehicles from West Street, Bridge Street, and others is guaranteed.

There is only one word to describe the cumulative impact of these hair-brained proposals - chaos.

Yarm Town Council will inevitably lead the way in co-ordinating the protests at these proposals, as done so admirably by Councillor Jason Hadlow in the run-up to 2011's successful Appeals & Complaints Committee meeting.

However, without elections to the Borough Council due within a matter of weeks of the anticipated meetings this time around to focus the minds of Labour councillors (as in 2011), I fear the worst.

Why Napoleon was right about Stockton Council...

From controversial parking charges to wonky lines, barely a month seems to pass without the parking arrangements on Yarm High Street hitting the headlines. However, one story regarding the most recent battleground – over the re-location of two signs informing motorists of the extent of the disk zone – caught my eye in particular.

A bit of background. After being issued with a penalty notice for not displaying a valid parking disk, Jason Hadlow – the chairman of Yarm Town Council – appealed to the Parking Adjudicator. After much consideration, the adjudicator found in Mr Hadlow’s favour, ruling the relevant signage to be “inadequate” and “ambiguous”. In the days that followed, two roadsigns were moved from their kerbside location, into the middle of two parking spaces.

 

 

 

Whilst on the face of it this tale is ostensibly another amusing one of Stockton Council’s incompetence, the comments of an unnamed “spokesman for Stockton Council” as reported in today’s Darlington & Stockton Times are altogether more worrying, being so disingenuous as to be downright misleading.

 

The spokesman said, “Two new parking signs have been put up in Yarm High Street. This is a direct consequence of the recent parking adjudicator’s decision. It is unfortunate that we have to reduce the spaces but it is a necessary consequence of the adjudicator’s ruling.”

 

Firstly, no new signs have been put up; instead, two existing signs were relocated. Okay, a trivial point, but not a great start by the spokesman.

 

Secondly, we come to the claim that the change was a direct consequence of the adjudicator’s decision. Whilst there is no doubt that the signs’ previous locations were criticised by the adjudicator, to blame him for their current location is a gross misrepresentation.

 

The parking adjudicator has no powers to direct a council to do anything. His authority starts and finishes with the ability to quash penalty notices; nothing more, nothing less.

 

What he actually said was, “Whilst it is not my place to make recommendations about the signing one obvious step to improve it would be to ensure that the Zone entry signs are placed next to the carriageway where they are more visible”.

 

No mention of where they should be moved to, and certainly no suggestion that there was any need to remove two parking spaces whilst doing so.  The blame for this latest act of lunacy lies squarely with Stockton Council.

 

Could they have been placed, as the adjudicator suggested, next to the carriageway, alongside the existing parking spaces thereby preserving them? Of course they could. Why weren’t they? Draw your own conclusions.

 

I don’t however subscribe to the view of many, that the signs were moved by Stockton Council’s Technical Services out of malice, in some childish act of revenge at Councillor Hadlow’s victory.

 

Instead, I think it far more likely that Napoleon Bonaparte probably hit the nail on the head, when he said, “Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.”

Parking stitch up

Last night, Stockton Council’s executive scrutiny committee decided to ignore the concerns of traders and residents alike. When given the opportunity to refer the decision to implement parking charges in Yarm back to cabinet for further consideration, the committee elected (by 9 votes to 7) not to do so.

In the spirit of transparency, the 9 councillors who voted against referring the matter back to cabinet are:

Cllr Nigel Cooke               Labour             

Cllr Bob Gibson                Labour             

Cllr Miss Barbara Inman    Labour             

Cllr Mohammed Javed       Labour              

Cllr Eileen Johnson           Labour             

Cllr Paul Kirton                 Labour             

Cllr Mrs Jean O’Donnell     Labour             

Cllr Ross Patterson           Ingleby Barwick Independents

Cllr Mick Stoker                Labour      

       

Despite the lack of any consultation with residents having occurred, despite the obvious risk to the continued success of the business on our High Street, despite the protestations of ward councillors from not just Yarm but also Eaglescliffe, and against the wishes of Yarm Town Council, the aforementioned councillors still voted against referring the matter back for reconsideration.

Now, the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed a pattern in the above list.

What is, and should have been considered as, an apolitical ward issue has unfortunately been treated as a political football by all 8 Labour councillors that sit on the committee and one of their new coalition buddies from Ingleby Barwick. They have ignored the concerns of residents and traders alike for the sake of petty politics. 

They should all be ashamed of themselves.

Whilst some Labour councillors will undoubtedly continue to try to pretend that the decision to introduce parking charges in Yarm was made in an attempt to alleviate the town’s parking difficulties, let me share a comment with you made by Labour MP Alex Cunningham on Twitter recently:

As is now abundantly clear, the council’s proposals have nothing to do with solving Yarm’s long-standing issues and everything to do with filling the council’s coffers.

Whilst this battle to prevent Stockton and Labour's latest attempts to milk the cash cow that is Yarm has been lost, I somehow doubt this will be an end to the matter...

Say Nay To Pay And Display

Last week, Stockton Borough Council's Labour / IBIS coalition cabinet voted to introduce parking charges to Yarm High Street.

Stockton council would like me to stress that their argument for replacing the existing disk controlled zone with parking meters is not to raise revenue (honestly, they kept straight faces when they said it and everything), but because the great British public don't have the wit to understand the nuanced technicalities of a disk controlled zone.

As though this wasn't bad enough, they are looking to install meters virtually the full length of the High Street, with the loss of the vast majority of the 127 unrestricted parking spaces relied on by residents of the High Street.

With Stockton's annual madcap parking proposals in danger of becoming an unwelcome tradition, you could be excused for thinking that the situation in Yarm was complicated. That there was no straightforward solution.  Well you'd be wrong.  Both the problem and the answer are breathtakingly simple.

Problem:  Yarm doesn't have enough parking spaces
Solution:  Create more parking spaces

Forgive my being glib, but that really is the crux of the matter.  Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying the solution is simple to implement.  Where could we put a new car park?  From where would we access it?  Who will pay for it?  These are difficult problems to solve - if they weren't, this matter would have been put to bed years ago - but that does not detract from the fact that the answer is simply to create more parking spaces.

Meandering back to the point of the article, I'll put this equally simply:

Stockton's proposals to introduce a tax on those visitors to Yarm that had the audacity to drive there won't achieve anything but deter shoppers from visiting Yarm.  Granted, that's one way of solving traffic congestion in Yarm but it has the one minor drawback that we would likely end up with a High Street which looks something like Stockton's in no time at all.

As for their plan to convert free long stay spaces into charged short stay spaces, Stockton would have you believe that this will boost business, by encouraging and enabling more shoppers to visit the town. My response to that is...well, just re-read the previous paragraph.  Not only that, in their misguided attempt to help the High Street what they will actually do is ensure that some 100 residents won't be able to park anywhere near their own home.

Furthermore, 100 or so people that work on the High Street that rely on these spaces to park during the day will just park elsewhere.  On West Street. On Worsall Road.  In Eaglescliffe.  Stockton would have you believe this won't happen, but it already does - ask the residents of Butts Lane, Eaglescliffe how much they enjoy Yarm Fair week.

I could go on - the report to cabinet was so full of holes one would need to write something of a similar length to correct it - but I won't.  Put simply, these recommendations are the veritable unholy trinity - they're bad for residents, bad for traders, bad for commuters.

I'll leave you with one last thought.  Mary "queen of shops" Portas recently completed her research into the state of the nation's High Streets and has made a number of suggestions.  One of these was to call for councils to "implement free controlled parking schemes".

It's not clear if she based her recommendation on the current arrangement in Yarm specifically, but we would already seem to be exactly what she's recommending.  But you never know, I suppose it's possible that Mary Portas' recommendations (and common sense) are wrong, and that Stockton Borough Council know what they are doing...

I'm back

After a truly hectic few months, my redesigned blog is here and ready to go.

As predicted in my very first post, parking in Yarm is well and truly back in the news (see here).  Stockton council's daft, sorry, draft proposals for 2011 - parking charges.  Well it was only a matter of time before the Labour led council looked to bleed that particular stone wasn't it?

I will post my take on the plans tomorrow.