Over 700 people signed our petition about the unfairness of the flate-rate cost of annual visitors’ parking permits.

Each year, Council committees called ‘Overview and Scrutiny panels’ investigate aspects of the Council’s work and suggest improvements. The panels choose the issues they will investigate, and have just set their work programmes for 2013/14.

We called on Merton’s Sustainable Communities Overview and Scrutiny Panel to investigate this issue. And because of the strength of the petition, we were invited to speak at their meeting on Tuesday 25th June.

At the meeting, Merton Hall Road resident Anthony Fairclough argued that this issue is one of simple fairness.

The cost of residents’ parking permits rises with the number bought – £65 for the first, £110 for the second and £140 for a third or subsequent. But the flat rate cost of £140 for an annual visitors’ parking permit means that residents who don’t own a car are paying twice as much for any visitors to park in their road, as those residents with cars would pay for the same parking space. A high flat-rate fee for visitors’ permits indirectly discriminates against those without cars who need of regular visitors, such as some older people.

Following the meeting, we were pleased to receive the following from the council:

You wrote to suggest that the panel scrutinise the visitor parking permit procedure.

The panel has scheduled a specific item for its next meeting on 16 October to look into the residential visitor parking permit charges.

We will be preparing evidence to submit to the Panel’s meeting in October.