Pay and Display Parking

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The residents of Surrey will now be aware that SCC is proposing to bring in ‘on street’ Pay and Display parking in many of our towns and villages. The Cabinet Member for Transport Ian Lake, has stated that this will ensure a greater turnover of parking spaces and will benefit the shops.

However, here in Walton-on-Thames SCC has now nearly completed a Parking plan after years of discussion. With a number of ½ hour, 1 hour and 2 hour free spaces available the system is working well and clearly benefits the shops. This seems to undermine Ian Lake’s justification for the new scheme he is proposing. I say ‘nearly completed’ as we have now seen no less than three different contractors involved with painting road markings, many of which have been done incorrectly and have either had to be removed with possible damage to the already fragile road surface or leave the road as being legally un-enforceable  as far as parking is concerned.

These mistakes have caused much frustration and no doubt have cost us money that could have been used to improve the state of the roads. Many of the main roads in central Walton are suffering from severe ‘pothole’ damage caused by bad weather, but in many instances this is aggravated by poor re-instatement work by utility companies. Our County Councillor suggested last year that SCC should investigate adopting legislation that will give control over the Utilities and their ability to leave roads in poor repair. Existing legislation already allows the County Council to order Utilities to go back and re-instate roads properly and can even charge for the cost of Inspection. Instead of spending time dreaming up a scheme to extract even more money from hard hit motorists and Council tax payers, the SCC Officers would be more usefully employed in getting out and inspecting our roads and thereby making far better use of the limited resources that they have currently to hand. Our now poor road conditions in the town raise the question of SCC’s capability to manage either sub-contracted services or utility companies work effectively.

It also takes SCC staff considerable time and effort to manage claims and pay compensation to drivers whose vehicles have been damaged by the poor road surfaces; compensation which we as tax payers are funding. Surely it would be far more effective to repair the roads correctly in the first instance. Again we have suggested that there are Local authorities who use a far better system to repair potholes; the repairs last 10 years and surprisingly enough, are cheaper to carry out.

Bearing in mind the fiasco over the current parking arrangements in our town, we are amazed that SCC wants to revisit them so soon. Surely it would be better all round if SCC left well alone. After all it took years to sort out the Walton parking scheme, apparently due to lack of funding.  To bring in on-road charges will mean further road markings and the replacement of recently installed road signage. It may also cause problems installing machines on the new paving in the High Street.  Let us not forget the role of SCC in the recent installation of lamp standards in the High Street after the re-paving had been done. In the current economic climate where SCC is looking at making budgetary cuts it now proposes to spend an unknown amount of our Council tax to implement another new scheme, the cost of which may well take years to recover.

We believe that there is widespread support from SCC Councillors against the implementation of new Pay and Display schemes and we, residents and businesses alike, should fight this proposal which could be the ruination of many small businesses by encouraging shoppers to visit ‘out of town’ free parking centres whilst at the same time subjecting town centre residents to untold parking problems.

The below links are:

1. Review of on street charging

2. Elmbridge Parking Plan 2011