Issue - meetings

To consider the attached report (C-017-2019-20).

(1)        That the Cabinet noted and agreed that the Council no longer continues with its current Off-Street Parking Programme on Housing Estates, realising a saving of £848,000 to the General Capital Fund and £485,000 to the Housing Capital Account, the depreciation not incurred is in the order of £21,000 and £19,000 per annum respectively;

(2)        The Cabinet agreed that Traffic Regulation Orders (TRO) made under Parts I, II and IV of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, as amended to control parking on its estates, be used instead to manage its roads on housing estates;

(3)     The Cabinet agreed an initial budget of £50,000 (Pro-rata between the GF & the HRA) be included in 2020/21 budget, jointly funded from the General Fund and the Housing Revenue Account on a pro-rata basis and reviewed annually thereafter;

(4)       The Cabinet noted and agreed that a list of sites be identified and prioritised for TRO’s in the same way as the current Off-street Parking Programme and agreed by the Cabinet each year; and

(5)     The Cabinet agreed that consideration be given in forming the budget for 2020/21 for TROs, which was to be jointly funded from the General Fund and the Housing Revenue Account.

The Housing and Property Services Portfolio Holder introduced the report on the off-street parking programme on Housing Estates.

The Cabinet had, up to now, been monitoring its off-street parking programme annually and assessing schemes to be constructed subject to feasibility, resident consultation and planning permission. This programme has been funded from both the General Fund and the Housing Revenue Account. A cost neutral policy for future off-street parking had been agreed by the Cabinet in 2016, with two schemes built under that policy proving that the payback did not offer value for money. Therefore, against the backdrop of the need to make savings across all the Council’s budgets, this report recommended ending the current programme and instead makes use of Traffic Regulation Orders instead to control parking on its housing estates.  

Councillor Chris Pond had no objections to the proposal but wondered if the TRO scheme would be enough. In his ward for instance there were housing estates built in the 1950s without parking spaces and nowadays many tenants and leaseholders had more cars than had been anticipated when they were built and nowhere to put them which may result in whole scale parking on the greens, which would be unacceptable. A TRO scheme was all well and good but perhaps the Portfolio Holder would also like to liaise with NEPP about installing relevant notices under the Essex Act 1987, otherwise we would get wholesale parking on the greens in the housing estates.

Councillor Jon Whitehouse was pleased to see the decision to use TROs for places where there were existing parking spaces. He would like to clarify, paragraph 14 of the report where it talked about the use of TROs on any sort of land, did this mean that the TRO would apply to grass verges and greens as referred to by Councillor Pond. He was less happy about the withdrawal of funds from off-street parking as a whole, it did not address the need for more spaces. This was initially set up to solve problems experienced by our residents.

The Service Director for Contracts and Technical Services, Mr Durrani explained that where TROs could be used was difficult to categorise both on and off-street parking. The £50k was asked for so they could look at and find a better ways of dealing with the off-street parking issues. The aim would be look at all our options to see the best way of doing this.

The Leader of the Council agreed with the aim of looking at the problems as they came up and finding appropriate solutions.

Councillor Murray agreed with Councillor Whitehouse and wanted to know how TROs could generate the extra spaces needed. Residents did not have enough spaces to park. Mr Durrani explained that there were just too many cars for the limited amount of space we had. Creating extra space was not cost effective. They had to look at how to get people to rely less on their cars. This was a complex issue with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 51