It's worth setting out why we made this decision.This CPZ was originally introduced a couple of years ago with the hours 9am to 6pm Monday to Saturday. This was the preferred solution from the consultation and councillors and the traffic team went along with that despite our sense that it was excessive.When the CPZ was reviewed it was overwhelmingly agreed by respondents that the hours were excessive and should be reduced to shorter hours Monday to Saturday.There was some support for Sunday being included and a lot of support for match day controls, however our experience of match day controls around Griffin Park has been negative, mainly because residents' visitors have been caught out by controls that people found hard to understand. Officers were strongly against this.We went to statutory consultation proposing Monday to Saturday controls only, however we developed misgivings about this because it became apparent that London Irish Rugby games, Cup games (and now very likely Premier League games) would quite likely be played on Sundays.We therefore concluded that it would likely be pretty well impossible for locals to park on many Sundays if we carried on with the scheme planned and did a further consultation only on the extension to Sunday.There were 15 negative responses to this specific change but the original consultation was far more split, with 13 responses saying no weekend controls, 14 saying Saturday only, 7 Sat and Sun, and 29 Sat and Sun event days.The officer summary states:Sunday parking controls would impact on visitors, not least because those wishing to stay during the 2-4pm controlled period would need to either pay to park or display a visitor permit that the householder must have already bought. However, if no controlled parking is introduced, residents and their visitors are likely to face considerable competition for parking spaces from those attending events at the new Stadium and occupants of the new residential development in Lionel Road. Whilst the proposed changes will introduce the requirement for visitors to pay to park for two hours on a Sunday (and between 6-7pm Mon-Fri), it will also remove the existing requirement for them to pay Mon-Fri between 11am-5pm and on Saturdays between 9am-2pm & 4-6pm. Introducing Sunday parking controls between 2-4pm is therefore considered a reasonable balance of these competing demands.CPZ's are always controversial and councillors have to make a judgment. I believe, had we not introduced Sunday limitations, there would have been a clamour to introduce them after (we hope) a normal sporting calendar resumes in the autumn and residents found themselves unable to park on Sundays. I still fear that Clayponds Gardens, which voted strongly against the CPZ and therefore were not included, will find their estate swamped on event days. If this happens, it would take a minimum of about a year to introduce controls because of the requirement for two stages of consultation.
Guy Lambert ● 1529d