Another day, another Haringey parking fiasco

Posted on 20th Sep 2008 by Lynne Featherstone

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse … Martin Newton (councillor for Fortis Green ward) has been doing a survey of parking bays in Muswell Hill and found that many of them don’t meet the rules for how parking bays should be laid out and explained to the public.

Earlier this year we forced Haringey Council to replace confusing and contradictory parking signage – and also to add further stickers to pay-and-display machines to try to explain bewildering restrictions. More recently investigations by Liberal Democrat councillors also uncovered that at five of the seven yellow box junctions enforced by CCTV in Haringey, penalty notices had to be cancelled due to incorrect lines, signs or Traffic Management Orders. And now this!

Given the number of parking scandals involving Haringey Council, you could start to think it’s a conspiracy rather than incompetence. The Labour council leaders need to act soon to resolve faith in our borough’s parking rules.

Glorious flowers – and parking tickets

Posted on 31st Jul 2008 by Lynne Featherstone

Lynne Featherstone with Peter White and his flowers First of my visits to residential and sheltered housing in my constituency to talk to my older constituents over the summer. In the photo – you can see Peter White and me with just some of the glorious plants and flowers that Peter has grown. These are outside his own flat – but Peter has made the whole of the outside area of Abyssinia Court burst with colour and beauty. It is absolutely glorious – and the picture doesn’t capture but an iota of the glorious gardens.

Anyway – not that many around – but had a great conversation with those that were. Parking tickets were again the order of the day. Seem to be a hot topic in Haringey at the moment.

Peter’s wife is disabled and a wheelchair user – so he has a blue badge and he was regaling me with a whole string of tickets that had been put on the car within moments of parking. All had been written off when he wrote in – and all had been wrongly issued. Makes you want to scream – for goodness sake – train your bloody wardens properly Haringey. All the time and effort Peter has had to put into writing about each wrongly issued ticket – all the time that Haringey spends then writing them off.

Time to introduce penalties for wrongly written tickets perhaps?

Anyway – second on my list of campaigns for the day is the hard skin on feet. In terms of older people, it can be excruciating and the Government has hugely reduced the number of older people who qualify for free care. At Abyssinia they do a free nail cutting service – but it is the hard skin that is so painful it keeps older people at home and immobilised. And it costs quite a lot to have it done privately – beyond many pensioners’ pockets.

So – I am trying to gather evidence enough to present to both the local council, health care trust and Government to bring in free foot care for the elderly. It really would be not only the right thing to do as part of a national health service – but a very good investment return on the cost – as the consequences and expense of immobility outweigh the investment by a long shot.

Parking tickets run amok

Posted on 30th Jul 2008 by Lynne Featherstone

You couldn’t make this up.

Walk out of my office this afternoon having parked outside on High Street Hornsey for about half an hour – perfectly legitimately. The actual sign is the sort that says you can park between 10am and 4pm for up to one hour and no return within two hours. A ticket on my windscreen. I look at Ed (who is my Head of Office and with me at that moment) and say – why, how? We check the signs – they haven’t changed.

At that point a woman came up to me and said, ‘Thank goodness – you’re the MP aren’t you? The wardens have ticketed all the cars both sides of the road, even though lots of us shopkeepers came out and told him to read the sign and that it is perfectly OK to park here. The wardens read the signs – and ticketed anyway.’

I am dealing with my own ticket as a private citizen (and no – I won’t mention that I am the MP) and no doubt it will be dismissed etc. However, I have written to Haringey’s Chief Executive because I want to ensure that all the cars that were ticketed in High Street Hornsey, between 3 and 4pm on Wednesday 30th July, are rescinded and apologies given.

Outside of the actual issue of writing tickets when none are valid and all the bother and trouble those people have to go to get them written off – there is the issue of Haringey (who are already in trouble over sharp practise on ticketing illegally) having traffic wardens who firstly do not understand the actual signs and parking regulations and secondly that even when a number of shopkeepers (who know the traffic rules outside their own premises) tried to get them to understand that all the cars were quite legally parked – they were totally ignored.

I am looking forward to hearing from Haringey with both assurances that all such tickets issues will be withdrawn, apologies given and what action they propose to take in terms of the wardens who wrote the tickets.

Blimey – it was only last month I wrote the column ‘Don’t let the good guys be the fall guys’. Speaking as a good guy … I rest my case!

Parking tickets

Posted on 13th Jan 2005 by Lynne Featherstone

The moment we have all been waiting for – the first session of the Parking Enforcement scrutiny which I chair at the London Assembly.

Today’s session saw witnesses from the British Parking Association, the Chief Exec of NCP, the RAC Foundation (not to be confused with the RAC) and The Association of International Express Couriers.

It was a really interesting session with the witnesses across the board agreeing on two important points. First, that the financial imperative of the enforcement contracts meant a certain level of financial outcome had to be delivered. Second, the signs and rules across London were confusing for many people. Can there be simplification and harmonisation whilst still respecting the need for different policies to suit different areas?

Of course, my now legendary ‘unfair’ parking ticket came up. I had managed to get through half the meeting before it raised its ugly head. Thanks to the Evening Standard it would appear the whole of London knows that on Bank Holiday Monday I got a ticket.

Having been seduced into Central London with no congestion charge and no parking charges, I drove into the West End on New Year Bank Holiday Monday. I parked on the first parking bay in Luxborough Street. There was a parking sign immediately by the space where I parked with no indication of any restriction other than the normal sign indicating the direction to the pay machine, hours and dates etc. On my return about 10 minutes later – there were two wardens ticketing the cars. They confirmed it was Bank Holiday and there were no charges – but told me that the bay was suspended.

I pointed out that there was no sign on the parking instructions by the space indicating any suspension. They said the notice was by the pay machine, but of course, being Bank Holiday I had not gone to get a parking pay and display ticket from the machine which was about 60 or so metres away. They said they did not have the power to cancel the ticket and suggested I talk to a supervisor.

When the supervisor came – he looked at the situation and agreed it was a ‘travesty’. The supervisor suggested that I should write to Westminster and that he would make notes to the effect that he agreed that I should not have to pay this charge because of the circumstances.

As I said to those in the room – I bet Westminster were looking frantically through their correspondence to the parking department to find said letter!

That evening, it was the Lord Mayor’s Dinner for London Government. Mayor Ken and the 25 Assembly members are the honoured guests at this event at the Mansion House. The Corporation of London sure know how to put on a do. I love this event – pomp, circumstance, men in uniforms, pikes – all things I eschew as a republican. But the fun of seeing such another world is irresistible and so well done!

I find myself going in to the welcoming line behind Ken Livingstone who is first in line and behind me Simon Fletcher – his Chief of Staff. The Lord Mayor’s wife says ‘oh you’re the woman I wanted to see – the one with the parking ticket’. Then Ken peels off to the left (naturally) and I and Simon follow to sit for dinner.

As I am only about a metre from Ken I suggest to him that he use his after-dinner speech to raise the issue of Hampstead bathing ponds.

Health and Safety are saying that the Corporation need to have lifeguards and therefore will charge swimmers for the privilege. Outrageous in my view. People have been swimming there for decades – and a notice saying you go in at your own risk would suffice in my view. It’s not a swimming pool. Over-zealous, intrusive and nannying.

Anyway – Ken smiled and his rejoinder to me was that he would raise it if I would agree to go skinny-dipping! In the event – he didn’t raise it in his speech and North London will be spared a dreadful sight. But you know – anything to save the ponds…

After dinner – when we were taking a ‘stirrup cup’ – I had the opportunity to lobby Michael Snyder from the Corporation – but he proved deaf to my pleas. A compromise position was about to be reached where the takings are ploughed back into maintenance. I still think it’s over the top and unnecessary.