Paper petition details

Petition against parking restrictions in Lower Strand

Recently a private company has introduced signage into Lower Stand restricting parking – this has made it so that those living in Lower Strand cannot park there. Since late June I have been chasing this matter up with the council through Highways Maintenance, Parking Client, etc… I am greatly dissatisfied with how this has been handled. Responses were late, vague and non-existent. No one in a managerial position is available to contact and they do not contact you when you leave your details (this has happened three times so far).

Having not received a response, a week after the deadline given, I called into Highways Maintenance again to be told that there had been a response – which I was not contacted about.

The response reads that “Highways have confirmed that they have not installed or made any changes to Lower Strand so any signage may have been erected by a private parking company on behalf of the land owners.” My assumption is that the signage has been held to be lawful which I highly doubt it is. The signage is in a council owned area, in front of people’s homes (many of which are council houses) preventing them from parking there – this means they park further up in front of houses belonging to others thus causing a chain reaction.

This same company has previously done the same and when a member of my family called in to get a permit, we were told we couldn’t as we were not ‘residents of the area’ despite being so, this is the same case now with all the neighbours I have spoken to. The last time this happened the council came and removed the signage as it was clearly unlawful so you understand my confusion as to why the same isn’t happening now.

We understand there are developments in the area, but I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the signage is directly above a sign for Lower Strand which also reads “London Borough of Barnet”. These developments should not be taking away from those who live in this area, we pay taxes and service charge and make up this community.

Furthermore, the workers involved in the developments are also using the very limited parking we have remaining. The minimal parking is a result of previous developments where parking was removed to build flats and fewer spaces than were moved were produced to act as replacement. This does not even cover the parking they removed – let alone introduce parking for the increasing number of households in the area. As a community we are unable to fathom who this parking is for since the bays are now always completely empty but our pavements and double yellow lines are full.

The restrictions are an onerous and cannot have been incorporated into the area as there has been no notice, signature or previous conduct, AEG v Logic Resource Ltd [1996] CLC 265 (CA) held that a clause cannot be incorporated where not reasonably brought to one’s attention. The people living in this area were not once told about such changes which would be affecting them, it is in fact onerous to prevent people from parking in the area they live in, look after and pay service charge for. Additionally, the council was to be restricting parking so that residents would be able to park.

I have also attached images showing the signage, the sign reading that Lower Strand is Barnet’s property and another picture clearly showing that the bays are completely empty and are currently only acting to resident’s inconvenience.

This Paper petition was received on 01/08/2018.

86 people signed this Paper petition.