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Labour Meets CPZ Waterloo on Brixton Hill
September 1, 2009 12:01 AM
Labour's onward march to spread Controlled Parking Zones southwards to eventually cover the entire Borough received a serious and maybe terminal setback when residents in Council Leader Steve Reed's own political Brixton Hill backyard voted overwhelmingly to reject Labour's latest proposals.
Reed said himself on his website that " the majority of people felt the problem of commuter parking was not big enough to justify the cost of paying for a residents' permit."
In fact the proposal got a right royal drubbing as almost every street in the consultation area south of Brixton Prison and between Kings Avenue, Brixton Hill and the South Circular plus the Holmewood Gardens area cross the A23 consigned Labour's Grand Plan for them to the recycling bin. We hear that similar parking proposals in the Clapham Park and Tulse Hill areas have also come a cropper.
Maybe residents saw through Labour's extortionate phony environmental permit charging tariff as just another way to raise money at their expense. And maybe after all the parking horror stories week after week in the Press they also cottoned on to the fact that Labour's Fairer Parking Regime was nothing of the kind.
Labour's revenue-led parking ambitions now lie in tatters like so many discarded and probably unfairly-issued parking tickets.
They will be under pressure to try again elsewhere to try to maintain the huge income levels they have grown used to over nearly four years but the electoral cycle means that they may have to put such plans on hold until after May 2010.
The electorate, meanwhile, has the chance just like the good folk of Brixton Hill to decide whether the constant pain in the pocket of another hopeless Labour administration is really worth the agro.