Visitor parking permits for council blocks in Brighton have been seen advertised for sale on social media, according to a new report.
Brighton and Hove City Council makes free visitor parking permits available at its blocks but residents living in flats in or close to the centre of Brighton said that the scheme was not working.
A report to the council’s housing management panels – where tenants, leaseholders and councillors meet with housing officials – said that sales on social media had been reported but no action had been taken.
Now residents’ groups want the council to acknowledge that the scheme is not working and to find ways to resolve the problem.
One suggested calling a city-wide meeting to gather ideas about how to improve visitor parking schemes.
Each household in a council block with visitor spaces receives a reusable permit.
The council’s car parks and garages manager Benjamin Tedder said that most car parks did not include visitor bays.
Mr Tedder said: “As the permits are reusable, the system is open to abuse by residents who sell their permits to other drivers.
“If abuse is reported to the housing customer service team, they will contact the resident who holds the permit to gauge the evidence of the reports and have the authority to cancel any permits that are demonstrably proven to be misused.
“Housing welcomes any suggestions from residents concerning changes to the visitor permit system and can perform further consultation on options to change the current system if there is agreement from residents of affected car parking areas.
“If residents of affected car parks feel that there should be consultation on changes to the visitor permit system, then this will be carried out.”
The central area housing panel is due to meet at the Barnard Centre, St John’s Mount, at 7pm on Tuesday 12 September.
How much is the going rate for a visitor permit? This council is squeezing the pips dry when they doubled the price this year
Moving away from physical permits seems like the obvious way to avoid reselling, with potentially looking at how permits are sold for cars, not for people. Digital tickets can then be monitored.
I think enforcement is the issue, and it seems the council rely on people reporting breaches. We rarely see a warden in our road. However, building works have been going on continuously since December, not by people in our road, but Ditchling Road which overlooks us. I’ve not reported it, because aware how cost of living has impacted a broad spectrum of people, hence do not want to impact them. We have an instance where 1 contractor has started to leaving his van in the parked in the road overnight to reserve his parking space, so that he doesn’t have to compete with the other contractors.
Our refuse is at times not collected, because someone exceeds the permitted parking width. This resident parking permit should not have been issued for that reason alone, never mind the fact that. they were granted planning permission for 2 garages. They subsequently built the garages, but use them for other purposes, but the Council have granted them parking permits.
So you have an issue, but you’ve not reported it?
Then you can’t justify complaining about enforcement.
Yes, true, but I’ve got it out of my system.
Sometimes we all need a good vent!
There are several lowered kerb in our city for garages but in fact they have been turned into rooms with windows n doors with letter boxes, but the council keeps painting yellow line on the road. Depriving of parking spaces or street bins etc. May be they don’t have time to investigate if they did the city would have recovered lots of spaces.
Drop kerbs are still drop kerbs, it actually doesn’t matter what they lead into – the law is very clear on them. It’s a bit nonsensical when they don’t lead to anything though, sure.
Dropped Kerbs are not just for vehicles, disabled people and those with buggies etc use dropped kerbs.
A very good point MB, further explaining the need to keep them clear.
I still have my permit for Malthouse court, it’s a piece of cardboard and they stopped reissuing them a few years back but are still valid. Only 2 visitors bays though
Used to be they changed them every year and you had to collect in person.
This has been going on for years, and the Council know about it, but do nothing.