Too many avoidable 'one-mile journeys' says Luton deputy council leader as new parking strategy approved

The draft parking strategy 2024 to 2030 is set to replace Luton Borough Council’s current parking and enforcement plan, adopted in 2013.

“Its aim is to provide parking facilities which balance economic, environmental and social issues with increasing priority to sustainable transport options, parking schemes and initiatives to support our goal to become a net-zero carbon town by 2040,” said a report to the local authority’s executive.

“A number of measures have been introduced since the previous plan, some of which followed trials at a small number of sites to better manage and enforce parking and associated problems.

“These included:

• the introduction of a scheme to pick up and store illegally parked vehicles;
• a red routes pilot around Luton town centre and on Airport Way;
• and a traffic exclusion zones trial around six of the town’s schools.

“A six-week public and stakeholder consultation was held in July and August. It’s disappointing only 119 people completed the whole questionnaire.”

Deputy council leader and Labour Beech Hill councillor Javed Hussain explained: “There are many levers to this strategy, which was prepared partly to address parking concerns raised at full council.

“We’re incorporating the overview and scrutiny board references. A strategy review would be at least once in its lifetime to ascertain whether any changes might affect its delivery.

“We don’t currently have pavement parking powers, but we’ve written to the government with a request for the legislation to be changed. We’re also asking for an increase in parking ticket charges because they haven’t been changed since 2008.

“The cost of living and wages have soared since then. We don’t believe it’s enough of a deterrent, as we issued more than 80,000 penalty charge notices last year.

“The parking strategy definitely needs to be linked to the transport plan. To help tackle parking, we’re working on car clubs and we’ve seen a 30 per cent increase in bus usage funded by the bus improvement finance,” added portfolio holder for sustainable development and highways councillor Hussain.

“Red routes protect our strategic roads. If parents sit in their vehicles on yellow lines outside schools, we can’t ticket them because they see the warden and drive off.

“Two minutes later they’re back again. It’s instant and on the camera with a red route, so perhaps we need to consider this. There are too many one-mile journeys. That comes down to us as councillors to lead by example.”

Liberal Democrat Stopsley councillor David Wynn said: “The biggest reservations at scrutiny were that much of the report and its decisions were based on a consultation with a terribly low response rate.

“The other aspect is around reviewing the strategy once within its lifetime until 2030, which the board felt should be about every two years. We felt another consultation was needed to get proper feedback on it.”

The committee approved the draft parking strategy, which needs to be reported to a full council meeting.