11 Sep 2025
Councillors refused to debate a petition on unpopular car parking charges because it had not received the required 500 signatories.
A protest against charges for on-street parking in Victoria Street, Lattimore Road and London Road was set up by retailer Jean Dennis, who runs Gallery 105, earlier this year.
Under the current measures, motorists are offered one 30-minutes free period a day, with additional charges on top for a maximum of two hours, between 8.30am-6.30pm Mondays to Saturdays.
Jean’s petition stated: “The council’s parking strategy fails to properly or sufficiently consider the impact on the St Albans economy, local shops or residents.
“We believe the decision is already damaging to the local economy and is adversely affecting residents and their decision to shop locally.
“We believe that the decision to charge for on-street parking in St Albans city centre was wrongly made without any proper consultation, and is in any event unreasonable.”
Although Jean could not attend this week’s meeting of SADC’s public realm committee, petition signatory and Victoria Street resident Valerie Avery spoke in her stead.
She said: “The consultation was maladministered, the decision was wrongly made without any proper consultation and ignored the needs of the residents, the impact on local trading and accessibility and inclusion.
“We believe the decision is damaging the local economy and is adversely affecting the residents and visitors in their decision to shop here.”
She said the scheme was over-complicated and failed to consider accessibility for disabled residents, workmen can no longer park for short periods to carry out repairs at local properties, and it excludes some people from accessing local businesses.
She added: “We urge you to actually speak to the retailers and the residents to really find out how we feel. Despite a promise many months ago to do so not one person from the council has spoken to either the retailers or the residents about it.”
In response to her comments, committee chair Cllr Helen Campbell said the petition had failed to reach the 500 name threshold required for a debate: “Because the number of signatures mean that it’s not debated by the committee, I’m going to suggest is that we write to you and to the petition organiser setting out the full views of the council on your the requests in the petition.”
