25 Oct 2024
The campaign against the introduction of on-street parking charges in Harpenden has reached the national media.
Today’s Daily Telegraph reports on retailers’ fears about the fees, which St Albans district council is hoping to bring in after Christmas.
Barrie Woolston, who owns Molasses House in Station Road, told the newspaper that free parking was a large part of Harpenden’s appeal to shoppers, and the council’s proposals threaten to drive them away and leave the town all but deserted.
“The sense of betrayal from the residents and the business people here is very high. We know we will lose business and we will lose footfall…
“They’ll just go elsewhere where there’s free parking, and the high street will slowly erode away.”
The parking fees story was originally broken by the St Albans Times in February, and became the main platform in the General Election campaign of Conservative candidate Nigel Gardner over the summer.
Following this publicity the SADC administration agreed to hold a public consultation on the proposals, which were included in the budget as a way of raising £185K for 2024/25 and almost £268K in subsequent years.
An e-petition opposing the scheme was signed by 1,774 people, with a further 1,264 and 6,022 signing paper and Change.org versions, and the council’s public realm committee is expected to report back on these responses and decide the next step forward at its meeting on November 12.
At the most recent Full Council meeting, a motion from Harpenden Conservative councillor Matt Cowley called on the administration to acknowledge and apologies for the distress and loss of trust caused by the lack of consultation about the proposals during the previous budget setting process.
He said: “It should be a pretty uncontroversial statement to say that you cannot have a tough conversation with the public if you don’t invite them into the room and while we shouldn’t shy away from making decisions that are necessary and difficult we should own them and bring the public with us on a journey.”
He called on SADC to consult on future budgetary decisions, at a cost equivalent to the sum spent publicising the Local Plan process of £8,500.
Labour’s Cllr Mike Hobday agreed: “There have been too many occasions this year when the council has blithely rashly and unnecessarily rushed into conflicts with the residents whom we were elected to serve.”
But the motion was rejected by councillors, who voted 45 to three against it.
