| Topic: | Paperless Parking Enforcement | |
| Posted by: | Francis Rowe | |
| Date/Time: | 02/06/15 11:36:00 |
| Looking at the timing of this I don't think this has anything to do with raising revenue or aggressive secularists at Ealing Council wishing to squeeze out religious organisations. There is no subsidy for the buddhists or anyone else - they do pay a discounted rate but given that they are likely to use the spaces less regularly than a resident the rate they pay seems to be about right. Another poster said earlier that there were 600 of these permits in the borough. A report that I found from 2010 stated that there were 1,000 - which represented a £30,000 annual income for the Council. Ending these permits doesn't make much sense but, like many things in local government there probably is a perverse logic to doing so. The ending of permits for religious groups came at the same time as the switch to electronic residents permits. It could be that the Council simply forgot to incorporate the religious permits in the new system or when they were quoted a figure for the new design they decided it was too expensive to have this feature. Either way it is probably now very difficult for the Council to back down because the new system is already in place and it would be costly to change. It is a long shot but perhaps the Buddhists can argue that the policy is discriminatory because most other religions have the greatest need for parking primarily at the weekend. The danger with that is that the Council could respond by extending CPZ restrictions to Saturdays and Sundays. |