As residents’ outrage over parking chaos in the Miltons area of Highgate grows, a Highgate councillor has expressed his anger at the response from Haringey Council.

Liberal Democrat Leader Neil Williams says Haringey Council’s response is “pitiful and inadequate”, and action must be taken to speed up parking solutions for the area.

Cllr Williams was commenting after he received a dismissive response from controversial parking boss, Cllr Brian Haley, to his requests that the Council get on with consultation in the Miltons area over parking controls. In a reply to Cllr Williams last week, Cllr Haley has refused to look at ways of speeding up the process so that the parking hell currently being experienced by residents in the Miltons can be addressed.

Cllr Williams has now demanded an urgent meeting with the Leader of the Council, and says that Haringey cannot just stick its head in the sand over the issue.

Cllr Neil Williams comments:

“Brian Haley’s response is arrogant and unacceptable. There is parking misery in the area, and no attempt by the council to take swift action – simply a culture of blaming others, when it is their own procedures that are at fault.

“Haringey Labour has delayed and delayed the whole consultation, and it now looks as if this whole process will take an entire year. This is simply not good enough, as the residents’ parking misery can only increase.”

Liberal Democrat councillors in Crouch End have welcomed the decision by Haringey Council’s Planning Department to refuse permission for a retail unit to change to a betting shop in Crouch End Broadway.

Lib Dem councillors Ron Aitken and David Winskill wrote to object to the change of use and highlighted their concerns over the dwindling numbers of shops in Crouch End.

Cllr Ron Aitken comments:

“We are pleased that our objections were listened to. Crouch End has already lost several retail outlets over the past couple of years and we hope that this marks an end to others changing.”

Cllr David Winskill added:

“Crouch End is up against some pretty stiff competition form large shopping centres and out of town operators. It makes environmental sense to keep shoppers in the area but to do this we need a comprehensive retail offering. This will help.”

Haringey Liberal Democrats and Lynne Featherstone MP have expressed their concern after it emerged at a meeting with police on Tuesday 20th February 2007 that plans have been proposed to close the front counter at Wood Green Police Station between the hours of 10pm and 8am.

The Liberal Democrats have called on Haringey Council to provide funds to ensure that the counter has twenty-four hour cover and for the public to be consulted before any decision is made.

The Lib Dems have provided continuing support to provision of a new Police Station in Haringey as they consider the old buildings ‘not fit for purpose’; however, they believe that there should be no withdrawal of service until the new facilities are built.

Ron Aitken (Lib Dem Crime spokesperson) comments:

“We only need to look at the incident on Wednesday night in Wood Green [a 16 year old female was stabbed by 15 year old male at 10.30pm on Wood Green High Road near Hollywood Green] to highlight the need for a twenty-four hour counter service at Wood Green police station.”

Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green added:

“Having successfully campaigned to maintain our police presence in all parts of Haringey I am concerned that the closure would send the wrong message to the public.”

Pressure from Haringey Liberal Democrats has secured a promise from top Labour councillors that more consultation will be carried out on the proposed review of parking charges in Haringey.

The Liberal Democrats have criticised Labour’s inadequate consultation plans and the Council’s Executive has now agreed that the statutory consultation period should be extended to six weeks and that all Controlled Parking Zones (CPZs) areas, old, new and proposed, will be leafleted to make residents aware.

Lib Dems have poured scorn on Labour claims that there has been a significant level of consultation already, as the issue of differential permit charges has been in the public domain since the development of the draft Local Implementation Plan [LiP] in 2005. However, this turns out to be just one paragraph within a two-volume document of around 400 pages.

Lib Dems are saying that this makes a mockery of consulting residents.A recent Labour press release also shows that Labour still are not involving people fully – providing only a postal address for residents to respond to and no real details of the extended consultation process.

Cllr Neil Williams, Leader of the Opposition, comments:

“Lib Dems have continued to pressurise Labour on this issue and have succeeded in ensuring residents are more widely consulted. This is a small improvement. However, we remain concerned that sufficient time is allowed to properly analyse residents’ views – Labour’s current consultation strategy allows just one day to consider the responses.”

Cllr Martin Newton, Transport spokesperson, adds:

“A longer period of consultation is welcome, but this must be a meaningful process with residents’ views given real weight. Any changes and improvements that evolve out of this consultation must be given sufficient time to be properly formulated.”