A year on from the introduction of central Hove's Zone N parking scheme, I read that Brighton and Hove City Council is to employ London-based consultants to review it (The Argus, July 6).
This presumably means the council's own internal review, launched in January, has been abandoned.
It presumably also means, like many other residents along the badly drawn Zone N boundaries, I will continue to be refused a parking permit which would allow me to park outside my own home, as I used to, rather than outside other people's, as I have had to for the past year. When Councillor Simon Battle, the council's transport spokesman, speaks of "the displacement factor as motorists try to find free parking" outside paying zones, he avoids the more significant truth that the council has, itself, created a great deal of displacement by refusing numerous permits to residents, such as myself, willing to pay but classified by the council as not living where we think we live.
Coun Battle also fails to acknowledge that much of the displacement is due to the creation of reserved parking spaces in Hove that no one qualifies to use and which, a year on, remain empty of legally parked cars.
It's clear there will be no improvement in this until after next year's elections, since the appointment of consultants is a decision to do nothing.
-Trevor Pateman, Dolphin Court, Hove
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