£20notes-thickpile

 

 

For the Cabinet meeting on 7 Oct 2024, Councillors Wesley Harcourt & Sharon Holder proposed a massive increase in residents’, business & key workers’ parking permit charges

 

 

STOP THE LBHF

PARKING RIP-OFF

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Charging us more, taking away our spaces

Soft-soaping us it is ‘encouraging’, ‘kinder’…

 

 

 

THE PROPOSALS … RIP-OFF CHARGES AND SPIN

 

·        They weren’t spelt out in the weekly mailing, (e.g. 11 Oct) for Hammersmith & Fulham Council (LBHF) which regularly pushes a ‘Parking for Less’ message! Nor was it in the 2022 Manifesto, which talked about ‘emissions-based parking which will reduce parking fees for many residents’ and even ‘free parking for residents’ !!!!

·        Spin warning! The 11 Oct mailing, links to an article with a disingenuous heading: ‘H&F considers first rise in parking charges in over 10 years’.

This conveniently ‘forgets’ that Cllr Cowan hiked up hourly parking charges during the pandemic and had to backtrack when it became an election embarrassment.  

 

 

Spin warning! The full proposals are on https://bit.ly/4gQM5YJ or

https://democracy.lbhf.gov.uk/documents/s129105/Key%20decision%20report%20-%20Net%20Zero%202030%20Parking%20Strategy.pdf. (charges listed from p.12).

For individual rates, click for tables (PDF opens in a new screen)

Resident permits               Business permits & key worker permits

Hourly (sessional) parking for visitors

 

 

·        For example. Permits for cars in popular Band 4 rise from £119 to £230  (UP 93%) or UP by 189% to £345 if you have a diesel model (which we were told was ‘greener’ by Gordon Brown’s government).

·        If you are really unlucky, your permit could go up from £119 to a massive £510 (UP 328%).

·        Second vehicle permits are three times the price of a single permit, calculated on the dearer of the vehicles. This could reach a swingeing £1530 (UP 207%).

 

 

·        If you are rich enough to have a Zero Emission Vehicle like a Tesla, permits are up from £0 to £125 and lower-emission cars up from £60 to £156 (UP 160%) which shows the proposals are more about making money than the planet.

·        Even key workers are bashed (e.g. UP 26% for a single zone yearly permit).

·        Motorcycle permits will cost 70% of the inflated car permits for the same band.

·        Blue Badge permit holders are not typically charged, but may lose from loss of parking spaces.

·        Hourly visitor parking charges are up for the vast majority (e.g. Band 4 UP 28%).

·        They want you to forget it’s a REAL NO-BRAINER that cars parked with their engine off do not generate any emissions! And we already pay plenty of road tax (VED) to keep our vehicles on the road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE PROPOSALS … A SINISTER AGENDA

 

·        By law, proposals should be about regulating parking. These go some way towards eliminating parking spaces, something that LBHF has sneakily been doing for years. “Reduce the demand of cars on this precious borough asset, enabling the space to be used for… emerging needs.”.

·        The parking spaces themselves are worth around £4300 per annum as real estate and this kerbside space is seeing increase demand [sic] from other uses such as cycle storage, flood defences, greening and café areas. Increased demand by the council eco-extremists, they mean!

·        “…will lead to changes in vehicle usage, ownership and behaviour, and to an increase in the use of greener transport alternatives, such as cycling and walking within the borough”. Soft-soap for pushing people out of their cars, and making them get rid of them.

·        The ‘Net Zero’/green excuse should rather be called ‘Net Millions for the council’? - but in the wider context, Gary Smith of the GMB union has warned it will cost jobs.   Note that the Net Zero minister Ed Miliband is trying to force through unpopular and costly measures on the excuse that ‘it saves the planet’, too!  Reasoned estimates based on the McKinsey report are for up to £500Bn a year (£18,000 per household / 12-15% of GDP) for the UK to achieve a miniscule change in temperature.

·        Net Zero’ and ‘Air quality’ are also hyped try-ons for money-making, as Sadiq Khan has shown.

·        the higher the tariffs, the better the shift in behaviour change.” Read: ‘The more we can charge, the greater the misery!’  The extortionate charges on impacted drivers will not be voluntary;  this exposes any pretence that the council is out to ‘encourage’ change.

·        ‘Doing things to people, not with them’ to use council-speak! But this is a council that uses Orwellian language such as ‘a kinder borough…’ to cover its tracks.

 

 

 

DON’T LET THEM DRIVE YOU OFF THE ROAD …

 

·        Watch out for a consultation on https://haveyoursay.lbhf.gov.uk/. This is likely to be full of spin, one-sided and it won’t give you the wider picture.

·        Don’t let them make a monkey out of you - over-charge you or remove vital parking spaces you’ve paid for several times in advance through your motoring taxes.

·        The council’s war on the motorist is continuing with stealth. Facilities like road space and parking spaces are being removed to make driving more unpleasant. Look at the King Street cycle lane fiasco. Or the Wandsworth Bridge Road parklets and congestion-causing LTNs. Or hyped 20mph limits after a strange ‘consultation’. 

·        Your right to own or use a vehicle at all is increasingly coming under threat from Sadiq Khan’s draconian Mayor’s Transport Strategy that the council supports. This seeks to get LPG, petrol & diesel vehicles off the road and urges councils to charge drivers more. (MTS proposals 34 & 26, p144, p58).

·        Don’t be fobbed off by the prospect of council ‘help’ if you suffer hardship. Many others will suffer, so make sure you oppose the proposals. This is a cash-hungry council and it plans to ‘review’ (read ‘increase?) parking charges every year.

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ACT NOW. TELL THEM YOU’RE NOT HAPPY….

·        You can email  Sharon.Holder@lbhf.gov.uk   wesley.harcourt@lbhf.gov.uk  or the Leader of the Council  stephen.cowan@lbhf.gov.uk  (see creative graphic, top).

·        You can copy andy@andyslaughter.com  (Hammersmith & Chiswick MP) or ben.coleman.mp@parliament.uk (Chelsea & Fulham MP and still a councillor, who promised to be on the side of constituents!). Also your ward councillors (listed on www.lbhf.gov.uk).

·        Tell them this will break the LBHF cost of living pledge, but please don’t use inappropriate language.

·        Please copy this webpage link widely:

www.fairdealforthemotorist.org.uk/parkingcon.htm  (a shorter PDF leaflet is on www.fairdealforthemotorist.org.uk/lbhfripoff.pdf (on secure server)).

 

 

Justice for over-taxed motorists

 

 

Please help spread the word and - better still -  get others to help.

Over 28,000 permits are affected, and thousands more visitors

 who pay for ‘sessional parking’ (by the hour).

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Campaign articles index and data protection

More on LBHF abuse of the driving public

Article on Net Zero and the War on the Motorist

 

Climate scares exposed

AEI  CEI  IER

 

 

Offers of help to 07976-414913 or PO Box 13199, London SW6 6ZU

You can also write to info ‘AT’ fairdealforthemotorist.org.uk

 

 

@abetterdealdn