September's Parish Council minutes

I am amused by the comments made about the meeting being organised by Cheshire East in respect of the resident's parking scheme. The normal CE process, and unlike the Parish Councillors, I have been to a similar meeting for one of the Wilmslow schemes so I am familiar with the process, is for the meeting to involve only the residents who fall within, or may fall within the scheme. Its not an open public meeting for all to attend. The meeting will discuss the fine details of what the residents want from the scheme and how the charges will affect them. As usual, when the PC is offered a stick - it gets the wrong end of it. For one, I do not expect or want any member of the PC to attend this meeting and if they do, I hope they will behave in the manner in which I behaved at the Wilmslow meeting and stay silent.

Spoken as someone who lives within an area affected. The scheme offered by Cheshire East says residents with 2 off road spaces do not qualify for the scheme. Lydiat Lane residents have 2 spaces. Carlisle St have some spaces off street, and only about 9 or 10 spaces available for permits. Permits will be available to Carlisle St, most houses, Chorley Hall Lane, and South Grove. The permits will be daytime, and will end at 6pm, at which point the spaces will be free for all. The issues of people coming home and not finding spaces in Carlisle St are unlikely to be solved by this scheme.

As for displacement, which ought to be disregarded in CEC view, it is already happening in many areas and recently started on Congleton Rd on the pavement. Residents of the proposed scheme area can say that displacement should be disregarded, but it is the poorest form of local representation to ignore something which is happening now and will be aggravated by this scheme. I believe the duty of local representation is to shape the local area - not just street by street - but the whole area.

What is proposed is a disenfranchisement of taxpayers who will be affected but who do not live in the proposed area.

I find it exraordinary that Councillors Keegan, Williamson and Lloyd, should take it upon themselves to make decisions on behalf their fellow parish councillors, who appear to have been kept in the dark, regarding residents parking. (see paragraph 3 of the P.C. meeting above). Whatever happened to courtesy, and democracy?

I also find it scary when reading Councillor Keegan's comments. He clearly does NOT understand the proposal for resident's parking, indeed, I suspect he is another councillor who has'nt even bothered to read it, otherwise he could not have written such inaccurate nonsense as above.

In response to Councillor Keegan's comments, not all of the houses on Lydiat Lane have driveways and those that do have driveways do not all have space for two cars. On Carlisle Street, the majority of houses have no facility for off road parking. On Chorley Hall Lane, no houses have off road parking facilities. The purpose of the scheme is to prevent long term commuter parking on both Lydiat Lane and Carlisle Street, with permits being available to eligible residents of Lydiat Lane, Carlisle Street and Chorley Hall Lane. Given that the majority of the spaces available on Lydiat Lane and Carlisle Street are taken up by commuters from early morning until late evening, with all of these commuters being either daytime workers in the village or bar/restaurant workers who begin their shifts during the day, why does Councillor Keegan believe that the scheme would not help people to find a space when they return home in the evening (and sometimes in the afternoon)? Quite clearly a restriction on parking for commuters on those streets during the day would address nearly all of the issues that the residents of the affected streets are currently experiencing (and have increasingly experienced since the parking restrictions were introduced on the roads immediately surrounding the village centre). I would suggest Councillor Keegan visits the affected areas and establishes for himself what the problems are and how these would be addressed by the proposed residents' parking scheme. I'm sure many of the residents would be happy to show him first hand the problems we are facing.

With regards to the POTENTIAL issue of displacement, the residents have not suggested that it should be ignored but have rightly raised the fact that the areas to which the cars MAY be displaced are either:
i) Not Victorian streets and in most (all?) cases have off road parking facilities - in this instance the displacement may be an irritant to those impacted but would not mean they are unable to park outside or anywhere near their houses; or
ii) Too far away from the village to make it likely for commuters to use them for all day and evening parking.

On a separate note, am I the only resident of Alderley Edge to find it worrying that some councillors are forming sub committees and excluding other councillors when making certain decisions?