On Monday, December 3 from 5:45pm to 6:45pm in the Tudor Room of the Mermaid Inn, the Rye Business Forum is hosting a meeting for local businesses to discuss the proposals by East Sussex County Council (ESCC) to introduce civil parking enforcement (CPE). There will be a free glass of wine or a soft drink on arrival.
The aim of the meeting is to frame a response to ESCC’s consultation. There is an exhibition of the CPE proposals at Rye Town Hall on Friday, November 30 from 2pm to 8pm and on Saturday, December 1 from 9am to 12 noon. Responses to the consultation need to be submitted by Monday, January 14. Details of the consultation can be found here
We hope as many businesses as possible will be able to attend to ensure the CPE reflects the needs of Rye.
[Editor’s footnote : Parking issues also feature in one of this week’s Opinions which backs earlier calls from at least one reader for residents’ permits all over the town for those who have neither a garage or a driveway for parking and are forced onto the streets.
The hunt for a parking space can be particularly aggravating when the car parks lie empty and visitors park in residential streets. We note that the plan makes no attempt to re-consider traffic flow patterns nor does it look at ways of encouraging both visitors and residents to make more use of some existing – and often largely empty – car parks, despite the financial advantage that might accrue to Rother from this. Residents parking permits are only being considered for a small part of the Citadel and those living in other areas of the town with no garages or private parking area may ask why this, too, has not been considered by our Rother and East Sussex councillors.]
Image Credits: ESCC .
Will local people going into local shops have to pay (80p) every time we pop into a shop.
As a local tradesman, I am now having to refuse to take on a job within the citadel of Rye
Most of the time it is almost impossible to find a space to stop and unload/ load materials and tools within a reasonable distance of a place of work.
From my experience I would estimate that 50% of the cars parked in the high street are there for most of the working day. I suspect that they are mostly people who work in the high street and a smaller proportion are residents.
The owners of these cars will have to prepare themselves for an extra financial obligation that comes with car ownership. Availability of car parking spaces will only get worse and if we want it to be controlled we need to find a way to pay for it.
The high street is essentially a commercial centre and those parking spaces should be freed up for customers and visitors. However there should be a concession of free parking for up to 20 minutes for those who just want to ‘pop in’ for something, or for the likes of tradesmen and deliveries.
No wonder the shops are suffering.
Maybe one solution to the trademen problem is to allow tradesmen to purchase an annual parking ticket (which wouldn’t cost as much as a resident’s permit) and would allow them to park within the citadel for 30 minutes at an allocated time, daily. (e.g. 9-9.30 Mon-Sat). If the company felt they needed more, (if they’re a large company and have many vehicles) they could be allowed to buy 2 or 3 such tickets for more 30 minute daily parking slots (obviously then paying more).
The tickets would have to be displayed on the dashboard when the vehicle was parked in the citadel and would have the name of the company, company number, contact info, vehicle reg. and allocated time slot printed on it.
These tickets could be issued across all the half-hour slots in a working day to spread the number of tradesmen in the citadel more-or-less evenly across the day.
Maybe not a perfect solution, just a suggestion.
Another idea is to do what many people in London have to do. When they know a tradesman is coming (e.g. to lay carpets, do renovatons, etc.) they move their own private car into a pay and display car park and allow the tradesperson to park outside their house and display their resident’s permit in his/her vehicle.
Yes, both these mean that the parking has to be paid for, but then we’re all having to pay for parking now, so in a business parking just becomes another overhead to factor into costs.