Drivers to keep permits

Adam Hewitt • Published 16 Feb 2010 10:00 0 Comments

MOTORISTS with residents' parking permits will be able to keep them even if the planned radical shake-up of the scheme means they should technically surrender them.

Reading borough transport chiefs want to merge the town's 52 disjointed zones into around 12 super-zones, to relieve overcrowding in the busiest roads and make use of empty spaces in quieter ones. But they admit this means some people not always being able to park in their own road.

Transport leader Cllr Tony Page said: "We won't physically be removing permits from people who already have one. But if they move to somewhere where they do not qualify, they will lose it.

"By consolidating the scheme into a dozen zones we can offer more spaces. The downside is we will be saying to some residents it means having to walk a bit further."

He said some drivers would see that as "horrendous", but said they needed to realise that on some roads there is physically not enough room for everyone.

Head of transport Pat Baxter told Monday night's Cabinet meeting that the changes were about "rationalising" a confusing scheme so that a space could be guaranteed for every household in a residents' parking zone.

Cllr Page said the first permit per house would stay free and discussed many changes he expected to be popular, such as allowing non-car households to have visitors' permits and splitting those up into morning and evening portions so they could be used by different visitors on the same day.

People in residents' parking zones who park on illegally converted front gardens or dropped kerbs will see that space counted as their first permit.

Cllr Page said: "It would surely be wrong to reward people who do this."

The opposition Tories and Lib Dems are broadly in favour of the shake-up.

Council leader Jo Lovelock said at least one resident she had spoken to had understood the problem, telling her: "I know you can't stretch the street."

If the changes go ahead after a huge consultation planned for this summer, they will still take months to implement from October at the earliest.

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