Having sent an e-mail to the leader of Kensington & Chelsea suggesting I would not work or shop in their borough I got the following response:
I am the Cabinet Member responsible for our motorcycle parking policy and
Cllr. ****ell, the Leader of the Council, has forwarded to me your e-mail below.
A person called “Catherine” has been distributing e-mails seriously
misrepresenting our intentions and motives and I fear you may have been
misled by her.
I attach an exchange of e-mails between “Catherine” and me and the Key
Decision report implementing our plans. (If you want to see the maps that go
with the Key Decision, please e-mail [email protected] for them.) You
will see that we have consulted representatives of motorcycling groups, who
warmly welcome our plans. You will also see that there is NO intention
whatsoever to charge for parking motorcycles in visitor bays.
What we are doing is offering a greatly enhanced service to our resident
motorcyclists, who currently pay £18 a year for a permit: in future, they
will have access, within a five-minute walk of every home, to a
resident-only parking bay provided with secure locking devices. For this
they will be asked to pay £50 a year, which we believe most residents will
consider a bargain for the peace of mind involved. The fee will be reduced
to £35 p.a. for those holding a nationally recognised advanced motorcycle
qualification (so as to encourage greater safety for motorcyclists).
People who come to the Royal Borough to shop, such as you, or to work, as you may, will continue to be able to park free in a visitor bay (without a security device) just as you do now. There will still be nearly 1,000 free visitor spaces throughout the Royal Borough, as part of a greatly expanded overall supply of motorcycle parking spaces.
We think (and the national organisations we have contacted agree) that we
are adopting one of the most pro-bike policies in the country. Please could
you take this message back to “Catherine” and her ill-informed friends.
If you do take a job here, please feel free to contact Peter Weeden and he will tell you where the nearest free visitor bay will be to your intended place of work. If it is more than a ten-minute walk and if there is other likely visitor demand in the vicinity, he will see what he can do to find space for a new free bay in the locality.
There will be no “policing” of the visitor bays to prevent our residents using them: quite the reverse: any resident of ours who does not want to pay a fee for enhanced security will be able to park free in one of them as now. We are forcing nothing on anybody: we are, as I say, giving our residents the opportunity to take advantage of a greatly enhanced service for a very modest fee and we are confident that most will avail themselves of it.
Not sure exactly what he is trying to say beyond that they have ‘consulted’ and that there is no way to police the free bays so visitors will lose out as residents will naturally park in the free bays. That combines with the fact that there are only 1000 free spaces within the whole of Kensington & Chelsea so there are in reality not that many spots.
