JeremyAs you should know the Labour candidates made a point of door knocking in the affected roads as soon as we became aware work was starting on building 5 council houses on the car park. Personally I was on the planning committee that approved the plans for these houses, and we were certainly assured that replacement parking spaces would be provided. It became clear during our door knocking that residents disputed that. We then arranged to meet traffic officers on site a day or two later, gained a better understanding of the situation and some ideas of what can be done to improve matters. We then wrote and hand delivered a letter to every door in the affected area, explaining, as far as we could, our plans. Here is the text of that letter:Dear Residents of Orchard Road, Glenhurst Road, York Road, Windmill Road and related addressesWe have been working to understand and look for ways to mitigate the parking stresses resulting from the development of the former car park on the corner of Orchard and Windmill Roads, which had served to provide additional spaces to the on-street parking in the local controlled parking zone.To this end we have sought detail from the traffic department about what has been done at this point and about potential options to improve matters, and associated timescales.Whilst we believe the spaces foreseen in the planning condition have been provided, many of these were conversions of previous single yellow line spaces into Controlled Parking Zone spaces, therefore they don’t provide much benefit outside the CPZ hours, when parking is at a premium in your streets.We are informed that:• Traffic can make arrangements for the shared-use bays in Glenhurst Road to be amended to a continuous run rather than the current individually marked bays; this would likely increase the parking provisions available in the road, subject to reasonable parking by users of course. This could be actioned in the coming months. • There are some locations where additional bays could be proposed, although these would all have to be subject to statutory consultation, therefore not likely to happen in the immediate future. • During our discussions with residents, we have noted that there are varying views regarding the operational times of the Controlled Parking Zone and if we are to propose changes to these we’ll need to seek some sort of consensus amongst residents. There were divergent views when the scheme was reviewed during last year, leading to no changes being made at that time, and it’s not clear to what extent (if at all) opinions might have changed. If there are strong views now for change, we’d be happy to support a petition from residents (noting the current times in Brook Lane North/Layton Road are Mon-Sat, 9am-8pm) to instigate further consultation although this would have to be programmed in with the current workload so unlikely to be given immediate priority.As you may be aware, the council is currently in the pre-election period which restricts any changes or commitments to change that we can make, as these can be construed as party-political.At this stage, we are merely candidates to serve Brentford West ward as councillors in the next administration and are clearly in no position to make any commitments to action, however we have heard your concerns on the doorsteps loud and clear and wanted to demonstrate that we will commit, if elected, to do all we can to improve the parking situation in the area.I repeat, if elected, working to improve this situation will be a high priority.
Guy Lambert ● 724d