Rye Town Council (RTC) will be discussing the introduction of Civil Parking Enforcement (CPE) with traffic wardens next Monday, October 30, at 6:30pm in the Town Hall in Market Street.
The meeting is open to the public and the council will discuss three questions raised by Rother District Council (RDC) about the introduction of CPE.
Rother is currently considering whether to ask the Highways Authority, East Sussex County Council (ESCC), to adopt CPE, which would allow ESCC to enforce all on-street parking.
RDC is one of a handful of councils that do not already have CPE, and Sussex Police has made it clear that it is unable to undertake the enforcement of parking restrictions generally because of limited resources.
It is also possible that the government may require councils that do not already have CPE to adopt it anyway in the near future.
RDC is therefore asking local town and parish councils to attend a CPE stakeholder meeting at Bexhill Town Hall on Wednesday November 29 at 11am.
Parliament has to approve CPE by ESCC on the basis of a detailed application to the Department for Transport (DfT) covering all existing Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) in the county.
These TROs cover parking details like yellow lines, loading bays and zig-zags and additional ones require public consultations. Even all the existing ones will have to be checked before CPE can be introduced and enforced by traffic wardens.
As parliament has to approve a detailed CPE application from DfT, the process – even if based only on existing restrictions – could take a couple of years, and an application introducing new restrictions could take much longer.
The invitation-only stakeholders meeting in November will be about the principle of introducing CPE and not the detail, and the stakeholder councils will be asked their views on three questions, which will be discussed at the RTC meeting on Monday.
- Should RDC ask ESCC to apply to the DfT to adopt CPE in East Sussex?
- Would stakeholders rather have CPE as soon as possible based on existing parking restrictions or would they rather identify all parking concerns and their possible solutions, and then introduce CPE? The latter would be a much longer process in terms of years as public consultations would be needed on additional restrictions.
- Is there a preference for businesses and residents to subsidise free parking through local taxation (ie council tax), or for CPE to be based on the “user pays” principle with parking charges introduced to cover the costs of the scheme?
Representatives from Rye and District Chamber of Commerce and Rye Conservation Society have been invited to the council meeting to make known their members’ views.
Photos: Rye News Library
It is interesting to note that the vehicles having issues, are those providing services to the Town. The process outlined is a bureaucratic one. What needs to be addressed is the purpose of parking.
Who is parking?
Why are they parking?
When are they parking?
What are they parking?
If you were to survey all the car park spaces in the town, I doubt there is any one day all spaces are full.
Just as important as enforcement is management of parking. For example those people who travel as a tourist to Rye, how do we communicate what is available, and in fact where do we want them to park? How do we incentivise those who travel to work in Rye, to park outside of the citadel?
It would be helpful if a Strategy for Car Park management was discussed, that met the needs of residents, businesses and visitors.
Could the problem be resolved in a two-stage process?
Firstly, the CPE be drafted on current parking restrictions and implemented asap to at least get the traffic moving freely again! After that, and with ‘data’ collated from a ‘working’ system, improvements and/or extensions to the restrictions be implemented in an amended 2nd stage CPE.
If we wait whilst Rye tries to decide what enhanced restrictions it thinks desirable, we’d be waiting Godot-like for an eternity.
Ideally, we should aim for a ‘shared space’ High Street where on-street parking was banned and pedestrians/vehicles would have to learn to respect each other. Certainly, the current pavements are woefully inadequate for the volume of foot traffic – not to mention the buggies & push-chairs of families or those who require some assistance to walk – over the busy summer months. Having said that, with the burgeoning number of festivals that the town hosts, the situation is pretty dire throughout the year. Maybe the RTC should undertake a survey of exactly who is parking along the High Street …… and before the Great & Good of the Citadel protest at ‘limitations to their access’ (there’s always Mermaid Street), the scheme could start from East Street and finish at West Street. As an additional bonus, this would make the T-junction at Market Hill so much safer for everyone ……
The idea of ‘shared space’ has been suggested a few times in the last few years, but who is not reading these suggestions? Do they have their collective heads in the sand?
The very least to happen should be a trial period just to show the doubters how well it would work.
Come over to Hythe to see just how great well it works. Visitors as well as residents would welcome such a scheme and our town would benefit in so many ways.
I would like to endorse taking a look at the Hythe shared space scheme. It has made Hythe a pleasure to visit.
I am amazed that after all this time, nearly two years or more, since traffic wardens were no longer employed we seem to be no further forward. I do not quite understand “shared” parking but I do believe that the centre of the town is in desperate need of parking control of some sort. The idea of free parking is odd, since RDC makes money out of its car parks. Is this idea to abandon the charges? Is it to allow parking in East Street, Market Street, High Street, West Street etc to be as now, to have no time limit. This has proved a boon to many residents and business owners who leave their cars for days on these streets.
The whole problem of parking needs a thorough review but it is realised that this will take time, and not solve the issues for years, especially as there seems to be no real push from RDC. Are they waiting for the government to tell them to introduce a CPE? That would let them be seen to “have to do it” rather than initiate one themselves. Where is the Neighbourhood Plan in all this? It was this sort of matter that they were designed, or intended, to solve with positive future proposals backed by residents and business.
I take all the points above into account and Hythe would be a good example, but in the end there has to be a will to solve it: it seems to be lacking, both at a local level and at RDC. Discussions and proposals and pushing things further away seems to be the policy to me.
I await the outcome with interest but deep scepticism as to any solution.
We need action sooner rather than later so I would be in favour of adpting the situation as is. I am sure there must be a mechanism whereby alterations can be made in the future.
It is also time to look at a traffic free High Street, at least for some of the time. Hythe High St is closed to traffic on a Sat from about 9:30 to 15:00 and is a joy. Sometimes on Rye High St there is a break in the traffic and people naturally take to the road to walk as the pavements are not wide enough. They seem to immediately relax. I am sure it would boost trade rather than turn it away.
The problems in the Citadel will not go away, but will gradually get worse, as more traffic try to access our narrow streets,time to step back in time, and introduce a toll for access,that would dramatically keep numbers down, although my suggestion will not go down well,with many who are probably the root of the problem.
I agree that what is needed in Rye is a scheme like that in Hythe, and several West Country resort towns similar in size to Rye, and just about every “heritage” small town on the continent, to drastically reduce the traffic entering the town at all. At the moment a continual stream of cars enters Rye, all looking to park and if you can’t do it legally, do it anyway all over the pavement in West St for example. Access should be limited, the High street pedestrianised at least across the middle of the day. Rye cannot cope with traffic at current levels.
No other town anywhere would permit cars to park all round the war memorial in the Churchyard, that situation is an absolute disgrace and disrespectful, to say the least…
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