Proposal to Reduce Residents’ Only Parking Spaces and Extend Charging to Sundays and Evenings

Dear Feuar,

The attached City Council Draft Parking Action Plan (9 & 30 page docs) proposes major changes to present city centre parking arrangements.
These are:

  1. To change the designation of an undefined percentage of city centre parking spaces from RESIDENTS ONLY  use, to SHARED use with pay & display users
  2. To extend pay & display charging further into the evenings and to Sundays
  3. To introduce pre- purchase permits for residents’ visitors.

These proposals could have a significant effect on your ability to find parking spaces during many periods of the day, as parking pressure in the city centre is clearly of a different order to that in the peripheral zones where shared use currently operates. It also means that friends visiting for an evening could have an unwelcome parking cost.

The attached email exchange does not fully clarify the Council’s intentions in terms of the description and justifications for shared use spaces appearing under Action 8 on pages 11 & 12 of the second 30 page document attached; and does not allay fears of a significant reduction in spaces reserved for residents only, and a substantial increase in spaces to be competed for by both residents and pay & display users.

The Restaurateurs’ and Motoring Associations condemned the proposal in the Evening News of 20th August as a scheme aimed merely at increasing parking revenue above the present £15M per annum.

It is also clear that Residents Associations have not been directly informed of the proposals, nor have they been made aware of the public consultation period which commenced on 27th August and will run to 31st October.

If you are concerned by these proposals, you should email the contact given on page 8 of the first document. i.e.  a.mackay@edinburgh.gov.uk.

The LMF Committee

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