A residents’ parking scheme has been approved for the Hanover and Elm Grove area, described by some as Brighton’s biggest free car park.
Councillors have agreed to order dozens of pay and display machines while officials go through the remaining formalities, including advertising the scheme and dealing with any resulting objections.
The arrangements will include a light touch scheme for part of the area, restricting parking for a few hours a day from Monday to Friday to tackle commuter parking.
Overall the Brighton and Hove City Council scheme will include between 4,500 and 5,000 parking spaces, councillors were told.
About 1,000 cars are likely to be displaced, many of them currently relying on unsafe or illegal places such as road junctions.
But Councillor Joe Miller, opposing the creation of a new controlled parking zone (CPZ), said: “In principle, I don’t support these schemes. They’re just going to shift the problem elsewhere. It’ll be Moulsecoomb and Bevendean next.”
The council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee agreed the scheme at a meeting at Hove Town Hall this evening (Tuesday 14 March).
The core area is made up of the streets of Hanover – south of Elm Grove – including the southern section of Elm Grove. Some streets north of Elm Grove, nearer Lewes Road, will also be covered by the seven-day 9am to 8pm restrictions.
The final list will be included in a traffic order to be published shortly.
A comparable scheme will cover the Craven Vale area all week also from 9am to 8pm.
A light touch scheme, restricting parking from 11am to noon and 6pm to 7pm from Monday to Friday, will cover streets north of Elm Grove towards the top of the Race Hill.
The committee heard representations from a number of people in the ward before the committee discussed the proposed scheme. They included residents opposed to the scheme as well as the Hanover and Elm Grove Local Action Team and ward councillors David Gibson and Emma Daniel.
A previous scheme was rejected by residents seven years ago and Councillor Gill Mitchell, who chairs the Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee, said that officers would discuss some refinements.
Labour and the Greens have their backing with the Conservatives voting against. Councillor Tony Janio spoke about the damage caused to businesses in the Fiveways area after a scheme was brought in there.
The committee gave unanimous backing to a Green amendment “that a trial scheme should be piloted allowing businesses to buy a number of visitor permits in order to help offset potential adverse impacts of a CPZ”.
Described mainly by Brighton & Hove News as ‘Brighton’s biggest free car park’. You seem strangely obsessed by the phrase.
I do hope that the mention of a ‘Mon-Fri’ light touch scheme above is just sloppy reporting. The proposal was Mon-Sun light touch and that was moronic enough.
Either way, the roads in the ‘top triangle’ – and elsewhere beyond Nimbyland – where response rates were double the paltry average and in which the overwhelming majority of residents opposed any scheme are to be steamrollered by the Council into having a CPZ and losing half of their present parking space in the process.
They will have a fight on their hands.
There are a number of alternatives but in the final analysis, if there is to be a CPZ here which halves the current parking we will need to be demanding to be included in the lower Hanover zone so that we may make use of all the space which will apparently be freed up when all the ‘deplorables’ – students, AmEx employees and other net contributors to the city’s economy – have been moved on.
That post is in great need of re-writing. It is incomprehensible.
The original proposal was Monday to Sunday for the light touch scheme but it was amended and will be Monday to Friday.
Oh well, it was good while it lasted…
They popped 3,000 people around the Lewes Road area about parking schemes which are just another tax raid! Out of 3,000 people, 267 replied. Out of the 267, around 160 said yes!
So because of 160 people, 3,000 people now have an added tax to park outside their own home!
How is this democratic?
And for the people that do vote yes, this proves that turkeys do vote for Christmas!
My doctor’s surgery is park crescent. I park as close to this surgery where it’s free as I’m living on £55 PIP and that’s all! Walking long distances puts me in agony!
Now I have to walk even further!!!!
So thanks residents of Brighton & Hove!
And thanks Brighton & Hove City Council!
You are making life unbearable for people like myself!!!