Nearly two years after it was first introduced, and after demands from the Local Assembly, the Labour-run Council has finally got round to reviewing the Hither Green East CPZ.

Surveys like the one on the right should have reached households in the area over the last couple of weeks.  Please return it to the FREEPOST address within three weeks of receiving it.

I was really pleased to see that Car Clubs are given a strong plug in the survey document. If you’re new to car clubs, they’re basically a self-service pay-as-you-go hire car you can use for as little as an hour at a time.  More info here. We  now have three cars in the ward – provided by Streetcar – on Manor Park (junction with Lee High Road), Fernbrook Road, and Holme Lacey Road.  Clearly if we can get more Streetcars in the ward, then sharing a car club car becomes a more viable proposition and more people will feel able to give up their car (or even just their second car!).

I was less pleased to see that in the 20 different questions the Council asks residents about their CPZ, not one concerns the hours of operation, despite this being a major bone of contention locally – and one the Mayor and his officers are well aware of from the Assembly’s work and complaints from myself and my colleagues.  I would therefore encourage residents who’ve received a questionnaire to use the ‘Any other comments?’ section to make any points they wish to about the hours of operation of the zone.   Controlled parking might be lucrative for the Mayor (£1.3million a year last time I asked) but that’s no excuse not to listen to residents’ genuine concerns about the overkill of 9am to 7pm CPZs.