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A green initiative or piecemeal meddling?
• MONDAY is the deadline for voting in Islington Council’s misguided poll on the cost of car parking permits.
The proposals are unfair and poorly thought out, for many reasons.
First (and despite the question that has been asked), the proposal is to charge based on engine size, not on how much pollution is created. It seems insane to create a situation where a household with one large family car that is only used occasionally will have to pay more to park than a household with two smaller cars that are both used every day for commuting and the school run – but that’s what these proposals will do.
Second, these proposals are retrospective. When the government changed car tax rates, so that the cost was based on CO2 emissions, this was applied only to new cars.
In contrast, the council’s proposals will apply whenever your car was built.
Every environmentalist knows that it is less polluting overall to keep running an old, but less efficient car than to buy a new one, but these proposals provide an incentive for people to change their car.
Furthermore, by making parking permits for small-engined cars much cheaper, they may actually encourage some households to get a second car in one of the more efficient bands.
Third, the proposals won’t even apply to many car owners in Islington. There must be a good number of real gas-guzzlers parked in private off-road locations, and, as has been pointed out in other letters, people living in Homes for Islington housing already pay over the odds for their parking. This proposal isn’t going to help them, however efficient their cars might be.
This poll also raises a more fundamental question about what the council thinks its role is. Surely, it is there to provide public services in a cost-effective manner, rather than attempting to shape environmental policy?
Many of us view environmental issues as the most important problem facing us today, and this is exactly why joined-up, coherent, centrally-set policies are necessary, rather than piecemeal meddling by councils making political gestures.
In any case, it’s not as if the government isn’t already tackling vehicle emissions.
The council seems to have overlooked the fact that we already have a tax that directly targets pollution caused by road vehicles. It’s called excise duty. It costs about 52p for every litre of normal petrol or diesel, and it makes the UK a very expensive place to run a heavily-polluting vehicle.
And unlike the council’s proposal, because it’s levied on fuel, the more pollution you create, the more you pay.
So I urge anyone who hasn’t yet cast their vote to vote No to this most muddled of proposals, and let the council get on with its job of delivering public services.
BEN REGAN
Coleman Fields, N1
• WELL done, Islington Council! I hope the referendum results in strong support for higher parking charges for the most polluting cars.
I hope Islington’s initiative will start a trend throughout the country and that other councils will follow suit, generating a national campaign on encouraging lower emissions.
Surely, as emission levels begin to cause irreversible effects on our climate, the least we can do is put in place a small measure aimed at discouraging use of high-emitting cars.
We need a strong response and a strong vote against pollution.
DAVID SANT
Rotherfield Street, N1
• HOW much a car pollutes is dependent on the CO2 emissions of the vehicle and how much mileage one does in a given period (as well as how/where it is driven).
Clearly, councils are unable to monitor all these factors. They are therefore proposing to tax vehicles on their CO2 emissions as banded by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.
The council should be asking something along the lines of “Should the cost of a resident’s parking permit depend upon the CO2 emissions that a car emits regardless of the number of miles it drives?” There is, of course, a beautiful irony: that the only time a car isn’t polluting is when it’s parked.
The council doesn’t need to consult residents. However, if it is going to undertake this exercise, asking the correct question in the first place might be a good way to go about things. Taking any action on the basis of the response to the current question would simply be poor governance.
On the subject of environmental issues, perhaps the council should put its own house in order first.
Rather than send an unrequested newspaper every month to every home in the area at great cost, both financially and environmentally, perhaps it should ask residents to “opt in” if they wish to receive the publication.
PAUL SELIGMAN
Hillmarton Road, N7
• I WONDER if Islington Lib Dems are trying to set some kind of record for perverse avoidance of democracy? What council leader James Kempton conveniently fails to mention about his parking permit referendum is that the council made its mind up about this quite some time ago (Ridiculous to say poor will subsidise the rich, June 15).
We already have cheaper permits for cars under 1400cc, and there is no sign of public disquiet about it. If they choose to tinker with their own rules it’s unlikely anyone would notice or care.
So far from “making no apology for encouraging people to vote on this issue”, he might care to explain to us just why it is so important to consult us now about a decision made a long time ago (to tick the “listening” box, perhaps?)
Of course, he could apologise for pretending it will be “revenue neutral”. Whatever the price of permits in future, £90,000 will have been wasted on this referendum which addresses nothing of specific interest to Islington residents, certainly not the open sore of estate permits and their cost.
How many permits will they have to sell to claw that figure back? Will a similar amount be spent on a referendum asking why permits are so expensive anyway, or why pay-and display is so expensive in Islington, or why our parking attendants are sub-contracted from a company which itself is owned by a private equity firm, which neither knows nor cares what the people of Islington want?
If he’s “listening to Islington” why doesn’t he ask us, instead of telling us, what we want to be consulted about?
Perhaps, the next referendum should be about whether Cllr Kempton should continue to pay himself more than almost any other councillor in Britain, and continue to award himself inflation-busting pay rises. It’s our money paying him, after all.
STEVE TAYLOR
Dresden Road, N19
• I DIDN’T know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of Emily Thornberry tearing up a ballot paper for the cameras (MP rips up ballot paper in anger at ‘unfair’ permits, June 15). It’s funny how the party that starts a war to bring democracy to the people of Iraq is so opposed to democracy in Islington.
The Greens don’t agree with the need for a ballot, but now we have one we certainly believe people should vote in it. Unless people vote Yes, there will be no incentives to encourage drivers in Islington to switch to less-polluting vehicles and we will all suffer from worse air quality locally and climate change internationally.
Like the Lib Dems, Labour wants to sound green, but doesn’t want to offend the 4x4 brigade.
Whereas the Lib Dems have hidden our proposal behind a ballot to square that circle, Labour is creating a misleading scare story, implying that parking charges for housing estate tenants will rise to pay for the cost of the new “low-emission” fees.
As Emily knows, this is not true. The scheme will not raise extra money, as higher charges for the most polluting vehicles will be balanced by lower charges for cleaner ones. A Yes vote will also put pressure on Homes for Islington (HfI), which operates a different system, with guaranteed parking spaces, to introduce similar incentives.
If Emily is really worried about fees on estates, she and the Labour councillors should support the Green Party in putting pressure on HfI to ensure its parking charges create incentives to reduce vehicle emissions and improve air quality in Islington, and also reward HfI tenants and leaseholders who run smaller and less-polluting cars.
Surely, that would be better for her constituents than empty, photo-shoot politics?
MICHAEL COFFEY
Islington Green Party |
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