The Standard revealed yesterday how the council wants to scrap free evening parking across much of the West End.
Under moves being considered by officials, visitors would not be able to leave cars on single yellow lines and be forced to use pay and display machines until midnight instead of 6.30pm.
Parking tariffs could also be doubled in some zones.
The move has come under fierce criticism from businesses, who claim it will hit trade hard. Boris Johnson also warned today that it could damage the West End’s economy. The Mayor, who has no formal jurisdiction over the council, said he would do what he could do persuade it not to go ahead.
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How do you think this proposal will affect business for members of our industry located in the west end of London?
The Westminster Council leader, Collin Barrow, said he had expected the huge public outcry over the end of free parking but insisted that growing congestion in the West End had left the council with no option.
Has anyone noticed that the West End has become rather congested recently? Why is that?
AAD Blog
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Actors are backing a campaign against parking charges in the West End, saying it would be “another nail in the coffin” for theatres.
Westminster council is planning to scrap free evening parking Monday to Saturday and on Sunday afternoons and start charging £4.80 an hour.
Tom Conti, Linda Bellingham and Only Fool and Horses actor Roger Lloyd Pack are among those opposing the move. Nearly 7,800 people have signed a petition calling on the council to abandon its plans, which will be handed to the council next Wednesday.
Jenny Seagrove said: “Increased parking rates will make it impossible financially for some of my colleagues to accept jobs in London.”
Lloyd Pack added: “This feels like an iniquitous and punitive strategy to extract money from an already beleaguered profession, also from a public who pay high prices to go to a show.”
Critics fear young families with children will be particularly affected.
Lee Rowley of Westminster council said: “The changes affect only around a quarter of Westminster. If anyone wants to continue to park free they will still be able to do so just a stone’s throw from Oxford Circus. The idea that we are shutting down the entire centre of London to cars is bonkers.”
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Members of the Musicians’ Union have demonstrated against Westminster City Council’s parking charge hike in the West End.
The protest coincided with the council meeting in which the local authority’s cabinet decided to impose the new parking charges. The changes mean from Monday to Saturday people will have to pay for parking until midnight and between 1pm and 6pm on Sundays.
In a statement, the MU said it hopes to mount a full campaign on the issue later in the year and described the charges as “a tax upon [members’] work”.
John Smith, the MU’s general secretary, said: “This is damaging to both performers working in the West End and the audiences that support arts and culture. This tax is a further blow to our members who are already suffering under the government and local authority cuts to the arts.”
The changes will be implemented in December on an experimental basis for up to 18 months.
http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/33125/mu-protests-against-west-end-parking-charge
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Westminster City Council is playing “barmy politics” by introducing evening parking charges in London’s West End, according to a business leader.
Shoppers looking to buy presents in the evening in the run up to Christmas will be faced with £4.80-an-hour parking charges. Free parking was previously available at evenings and weekends in the West End.
The move has been criticised by the Federation of Small Businesses’ London senior development manager Matthew Jaffa, who fears shoppers will desert the high street in favour of retail parks and large shopping centres.
Jaffa said: “Unfortunately it will mean that trade for hotels, retailers and pubs in particular will drop off and business will be driven away. It is a revenue grab and people will go to out-of-town shopping centres because it is too dear to park.
“People will have to use public transport or park on the periphery,” he said. “They will drive into town and circle round, causing more congestion in London, otherwise they will go to Westfield Stratford City and Brent Cross and not shop on the high street.
“It’s going to come in on December 1, the worst possible time. You want people to shop in Oxford Street and central London but this will have an adverse effect, driving them away. It’s barmy politics.”
Westminster City Council said the new parking charges were being introduced to combat congestion at evenings and weekends. There is more traffic at 10pm than 10am in some parts of the city, according to the council’s guide to parking in Westminster. The council aims to increase the turnover of car parking in the area to make it easier for people driving into the capital to find a parking space, the release said.
However, Jaffa believes the new parking policy is designed to raise revenue and not ease traffic in central London.
He said: “If it was just an issue of congestion then we could buy that, but it’s not. It’s an easy way of taxing businesses through parking. They need to see the business reaction to this and rethink this idea. This part of the council needs to work with other parts and look at the retention of business rates rather than just slapping taxes on them.”
Almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of businesses in London say extensions to parking restrictions have a negative effect on their trade, Jaffa added.
http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/barmy-west-end-evening-parking-charges/633.article
The mastermind behind a bitterly contested move impose Sunday and evening parking charges in the West End was revealed today as a £167,000-a-year Westminster council chief.
Rosemarie MacQueen, director of the built environment, was praised by council leader Colin Barrow for her “thorough, comprehensive and professional” proposals that included the new charges.
A petition signed by 8,000 people calls the move “catastrophic” for restaurants, casinos and theatres, and likely to put night workers’ safety at risk by forcing them to use public transport. Today Labour’s mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone called the charges “a new tax on Londoners” and “a pure money-making scheme”. Ms MacQueen, the director of city planning Hugh Brennan and the operational director of city planning, Barry Smith, spent almost a year reviewing parking.
Ms MacQueen has said unrestricted parking in the West End at night and at weekends “has increasingly stifled the council’s ability to manage its road network and has impacted on the ability to have doorstep deliveries”.
Charges of up to £4.80 an hour were approved by the cabinet in August and will come into effect early next year. Opponents, who include actors Bill Paterson, Diana Quick, Janet Suzman, Tim Pigott-Smith and Nickolas Grace, claim up to £7million a year will be raised to plug a black hole in the council’s finances, an allegation strongly denied by leaders of the Tory-controlled council.
In the Standard today, former London mayor Mr Livingstone writes: “Westminster’s latest rip-off charges are nothing to do with regulating congestion or improving the environment, and everything to do with ripping off Londoners as a whole to fill Westminster council’s coffers.”
A spokesman for the council said: “We can’t legally make money from parking. The money raised has to be invested back into roads. Westminster is different from anywhere else in Britain. Our roads are as busy at 10pm as they are at 10am.”
Praised: Rosemarie MacQueen, who carried out a year-long parking review –
A similar scheme was considered by the council in 2003 but rejected because of the potential harm to the economy of the West End, which has 5,600 parking spaces.
The council said the idea for the charges “wouldn’t have come from one particular person. It’s a chain of people, but it started with the research team as the research pointed out that something had to be done.”
Lee Rowley, cabinet member for parking said: “The idea that the council is not supporting businesses is ridiculous. We have come up with a fair, research-based approach to deal with the ever growing demands on the city centre.
“Congestion and a lack of safe parking space will become a real problem going forward and it would be irresponsible for the council to not act now – it is our legal duty. The people who know their areas best are those who live and work there. We will put in extra parking bays as part of these changes and are always open to more suggestions.”Praised: Rosemarie MacQueen, who carried out a year-long parking review.
Posted on November 15, 2011 by Editors
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