Question:
I have been receiving an increasing number of complaints regarding the lack of parking facilities for businesses in areas with Residents Parking Permits. This is having an impact on both local businesses and others. Several have received parking tickets and many residents are having problems finding spaces for someone like a plumber, builder, cleaner or other to park.
I made a suggestion about a year ago where Wokingham Borough Council could provide a Business Parking Permit, one that allows a local business to park in these areas, but restricted to Mon - Fri 8am - 5pm with an appropriate annual charge.
Can the Executive Member responsible please advise what action is being taken to assist these businesses?
Minutes:
Question
I have been receiving an increasing number of complaints regarding the lack of parking facilities for businesses in areas with Residents Parking Permits. This is having an impact on both local businesses and others. Several have received parking tickets and many residents are having problems finding spaces for someone like a plumber, builder, cleaner or other to park.
I made a suggestion about a year ago where Wokingham Borough Council could provide a Business Parking Permit, one that allows a local business to park in these areas, but restricted to Mon - Fri 8am - 5pm with an appropriate annual charge.
Can the Executive Member responsible please advise what action is being taken to assist these businesses?
Answer
It is very interesting that the number of complaints around roads with resident parking permits has increased recently especially along the same lines as you have been talking about. It raises the question which I have raised before as well as to why this is happening. Absolutely nothing has changed, no new residents bays have been created, no non-residents bays have been removed so why the increased complaints? I can only assume this is because the complainants are now being caught ignoring the parking restrictions.
As I have already announced in a previous answer we will be carrying out a root and branch review of the current residents parking permit scheme but it is highly unlikely that they will be changed to allow additional drivers to park in a resident’s bay. The issuing of residents parking permits is extremely tightly controlled and restricted to residents who do not have or have extremely limited off street parking with their properties. Almost every road with residents parking bays have significantly more permits issued than spaces available so those residents must be the priority for those spaces.
Our neighbour Reading Borough Council has such a scheme as you propose for which they charge up to £330 per permit, so it could be a money earner. In Reading they have parking permit zones, about 6 of them, rather than individual roads which we have which means a permit holder has the option of parking at over 500 different bays in each of those 6 zones. We only have 341 spaces in total across the whole Borough. We already have an option which businesses could use to satisfy your requirement, which is called a car park season ticket which we could look at special rates if the businesses wanted to contact us.
Supplementary Question:
I think that there is lots of small businesses in this area who will not be very happy with an answer like that because people visit for a short period of time as I was talking about. However, I will move on. I registered 14 roads in Twyford which were having issues. In fact I raised the issue about the introduction of Civil Parking with the officers 12 months ago, before it was introduced. We have commuter parking problems in Twyford. The cars that park there are not parking in illegal places but they are causing major problems. Can I ask what actions the Executive Member is doing for areas which are located around our railway stations and Twyford in particular?
Supplementary Answer:
Certainly I will although it is nothing to do with residents parking permits or the business parking permits, but I will answer it. The Enforcement Agency is going out there already ticketing people, which is why we are getting a lot more complaints. That activity will continue. There is an option for the local Parish Council or any Town Council, if they wish to, fund additional activity, which would obviously be focused by them if they paid for it.