Parking issues in Brighton and Hove are multiplying with several contentious matters coming to the head over the past week, as reported in the pages of The Argus.
Big new increases in parking fees, more problems with the council’s system for issuing parking permits and a failed experimental parking scheme have cost local taxpayers’ time and money and prompted frustrated residents to speak out and form a new action group.
This week some of the biggest parking fees and charges increases in the City’s history came into effect following Green and Labour Councillors voting them in at the City Budget.
From May 3rd if you own a car in Brighton you are to be hit with some big hikes: Parking for an hour in a council car park will now cost £5.10, residential parking permits are going up with some costing £560 now. Traders permits are also being increased and now cost approximately £800 compared to under £400 before the Greens first took over.
Residents are furious about the excessive nature of the increases. They go well beyond the initial proposals from Council officers, with Labour and the Greens deciding at the Budget meeting to increase them further. The new charges look like they have been introduced to penalise motorists in the city as part of the Green-Labour ideological car free city policy and will no doubt make it harder for families to go about their day to day life, increasing their cost of living. One resident, Jonny Whiting, has set up an action group and spoken out on Radio Sussex this week about the changes.
These big increases have come at the same time as new problems emerged with the Council’s Parking permit issuing system.
As reported by The Argus, residents have recently been sent notices asking them to complete their renewals through the Council’s website only, but this system has failed due to a new address-matching system not working. There have been further design flaws in the process whereby the Council is requiring ID to be uploaded, such as car insurance documentation, which is then not recognised and then being rejected by the system.
This is the latest in a long list of problems residents have faced with the Council’s parking permit system since the council moved to a remote service at the start of the pandemic and continues to keep Hove Town Hall services closed to residents.
There have been problems with the Council’s IT system, where permits have not been issued correctly and systems delays where permits have not been being issued on time. This has been compounded by customer service issues for residents who when calling the council to try and get the problems resolved found that nobody picked up because staff are working from home still.
Residents are at their wits end over the ongoing problems and there are increasing calls for councillors and council staff to return to the office to fix the problems and get on top of the issues. The Greens and Labour have voted time and again to keep the council offices closed and to have staff work from home but this arrangement is not providing the same level of service to residents as before the pandemic. Previously, when there used to be a problem, residents would walk into Hove Town Hall and sort the issues out, but with the Town Hall still being closed residents do not have that option.
This has all happened against the backdrop of a council experimental parking scheme collapsing before it even started. The Green-Labour proposal to build an experimental park and ride at Westdene followed its citizens climate assembly including the proposal in its list of demands for the city.
However, as previously argued in this column, the Westdene Park and Ride proposal was always unlikely to succeed. Park and Ride schemes require big car parks with thousands of bays to be created to be economical and the South Downs National Park and residents would never consent to allowing this on its land at Westdene, which has ultimately proven to be the case.
This joins a number of other experimental schemes that have been introduced and scrapped by this council, including the closure of Madeira Drive, Old Shoreham Road Temporary Cycle Lane and the A259 cycle lane. Much money and time has been wasted and some parking bays have now been lost forever, causing real difficulties to people with a disability.
The Council's many anti-car policies are costing residents, wasting taxpayers’ money and not delivering value for money on council services. They are not improving congestion and in many cases are making it worse. Parking will no doubt be a major election issues for residents as we move towards May 2023.
