May I use your pages to object strongly to the new proposals by the city council in relation to residents' parking charges:
- They are proposing huge increases.
- These represent an unfair additional tax on local residents.
- The rise is well above the average inflation figures, indeed excessively so.
- In principle, in these times of economic crisis when families are struggling to balance their budgets, such large increases are little short of scandalous.
- Residents already pay substantial council tax in the affected areas.
- The added cost discriminates against the elderly and sick who require care and, moreover, it appears deliberately designed to do so.
- The charges represent an assault on family life, in that when friends and family visit, residents will have to pay for them to park outside their own homes.
- Is the council serious in its proposal that every time residents have a tradesman coming to the house to do work, they should pay £1 in parking fees?
- The net effect will be that those of us who currently park mainly on our drives will put our cars on the road so that our visitors can park for free on the drives. This will result in overcrowding on the road and a serious increase in the danger to young children from passing traffic which often travels far too fast down here. Young families now make up the majority on this street.
Thorpe Lea Road is already a dangerous street to live on. Apart from the speeding cars, the short term parking by Hunt and Coombes is far too near to the junction with Thorpe Road. This means that cars can often not turn into the street without waiting for traffic coming up Thorpe Lea Road
This is compounded by the number of cars using Thorpe Lea Road to do a U-turn and go in the opposite direction to the one they were travelling in Thorpe Road.
This is not what we elected our councillors for. In summary, it represents nothing more than a cynical raid on the pockets of Peterborough residents, without regard for the health and safety of those residents, who the council must see as a soft target.
I hope you will agree that this unfair and ill-conceived scheme should be abandoned.
John Mullen
Thorpe Lea Road,
PeterboroughThe full article contains 401 words and appears in Peterborough ET newspaper.
