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Can office workers park in front of your house?


Geoffrey Settle

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As long as the car is taxed etc. then any driver has every bit as much right to park on any particular bit of road as does someone who happens to own a nearby property.

 

Exactly which is why they are using these roads narrow twisty roads as car parks and the residents are up in arms. They could ask for a permit only scheme but this would cost them £60/car/year for adminisatration. I take it then that you would just accept the Home Office using your street ot close as a car park for it's employees?

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As many as want to, like I say any driver has just as much right to park on any bit of road as any other. It's certainly no skin off my nose while I'm out at work.

 

Oh, and all those residents who are complaining have properties with their own driveways don't they? So it's not like they've nowhere to park their own cars if they are at home.

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As many as want to, like I say any driver has just as much right to park on any bit of road as any other. It's certainly no skin off my nose while I'm out at work.

 

Oh, and all those residents who are complaining have properties with their own driveways don't they? So it's not like they've nowhere to park their own cars if they are at home.

I've just received conformation that they will be outside your house from Monday, they are not the best or most considerate parkers in the world but I'm sure you will cope :mrgreen:

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I won't even see them. I'll be at work myself.

 

But they'd best get here plenty early to beat all the people who can no longer park on the car parks in Lymm since WBC hiked the prices to subsidise your precious residents only schemes!

 

(BTW. do you know if there any jobs going at the Home Office building? Sounds like there's plenty of free parking nearby!)

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No idae about jobs I'm afarid I don't but if there are you will need special qualifications and experience to work there and security clearance but I can't say any more than that.

 

As for permit paking they were brought in with the new Wires Stadium and were free but since then charges have been introduced but I don't know when that happened or who introduced it.

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Like already said a person has no overall right to be the only person who can park on a road outside their home or in their street and although frustrating when it happens outside your own home it happenes everywhere so there is ALWAYS somene affected by it. 
 

At least the people near the Home Office site only have to put up with it during the day, many people who live near Stockton Heath village for example can't park outside their own homes day OR night becuase of how the village makeup is these days.  Same must happen near town centre etc etc etc.

Going back to the Home Office problem...... do they not have their own car park they could use as it's on a Business Park isn't it ? 

 

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Whatever the charging structure it's still true that parking services as a whole across the borough is still running at a deficit (why wouldn't it? it's an essential economic service), but that the local centre car parks have always run at a surplus. Meaning that residents parking schemes are being very heavily cross subsidised from both council coffers and the charges paid by car park users.

 

Surely if residents want a permanently reserved bit of the public highway then they should at least be expected to pay the full costs of administering and policing that provision.

 

Drivers pay to use the roads. They need to be able to park when they get to where they're going. The answer is not more restrictions and regulations. People who have nothing better to do but twitch their lace curtains and tut at the car "spoiling their view" of the house across the street need to get out a bit more!

 

(oh, and the residents parking schemes round the hospital predate the Halliwell Jones by a long way and are the main reason that it's almost impossible to get to a daytime hospital appointment on time. All those roads deserted while most of the residents are out at work, but no room for patients on the hospital car parks.)

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Maybe the problem with the Home Office parking could have been avoided if planners and councillors hadn't been so keen to get them to move here.

As reported in the Warrington G (2010)...
 

WHITEHALL workers will be Warrington-bound as the Government looks to move civil servants out of London.

The first batch of staff will be moving to Birchwood after the Home Office signed a deal for new office space at Birchwood Park as part of plans to make Government departments less London-centric.
 

It has agreed to take up 157,000 sq ft of new office space at Birchwood Park to create a new regional hub for the department that deals with immigration and passports, drugs policy, counter-terrorism and police.
 

The town fought off competition from others across the region to get the jobs.
 

John Groves, development services manager at Warrington Borough Council said: “Planning officers are very much aware that the planning process is often viewed as a source of delay.

“In this case it was known that alternative sites elsewhere in the north west were under consideration and that it was important to avoid unnecessary delays if Warrington was to be able to secure the benefit of major investment.”
 

The council held discussions with the developer so that the process of the planning application could be made as swiftly as possible to keep Warrington’s bids for the jobs in the frame while following full planning protocol, he explained.

 

Mr Groves added: “The ability to use the skills of planning officers well versed in handling major and complex applications of this kind has added to the location advantages of Warrington." The Government department will take a 25-year lease on the 100 Birchwood Corporate building at the Marshal CDP development and will take up a 55,000 sq ft building along with an extension on the six-acre site.

 

Helen Jones, Warrington North MP, was among those helping to put forward the town’s case to Government to see the jobs come to Warrington.

She said: “Although many of the jobs will be transferred in the short term from elsewhere, clearly there will be opportunities for people in Warrington as the development progresses.

“Any jobs coming to this area are welcome. We now need to redouble our efforts to attract bigger companies and more services to the Omega site.”

 

 

While I'm not saying they shouldn't have been encouraged to come to Warrington.... maybe a little foresight and better planning may have helped.

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I will convey your thoughts to the next Longbarn Residents Association meeting at the end of the month but don't expect me back alive. They have been fighting this since they became aware of it - only when they saw the bricks and morta going up - they claim that they hadn't been told up until then.

They have car parking space but under the allocation rules - sorry I can't remember the %.

Yes they had a travel to work plan and under the S106 agreement set up a bus service between the railway stations for 3 years and funded a new toucan crossing, pedestrian crossing etc.

I organised 3 public meetings in 2011 to let the residents vent their feelings and meet the then manager who did agree to a scheme but since he has gone things have gone down hill with him - the LRA are in regular meetings and trying to talk to the new manageress.

In 2011 the other offices in the Olympic Park had car parking spaces and the Home Office employees who didn't have spaces in the full HO car park used these empty spaces - however the Olympic Offices are now filling up and need their car park spaces back........

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car park charges aren't responsible for the  surplus, its the ignorant, thick or arrogant idiots who either don't bother paying or don't bother paying enough and are quite rightly fined that take the local centre car parks into surplus.  Thank god so many of this type of person frequent the local centre car parks, all of which are much cheaper than it is to park for town centre .

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Geoff... from what you have just said then clearly there is some blame and a finger to point at yet another balls up by the planning department and Co.  Residents SHOULD have been made aware way BEFORE it ever got to the build stage.  If they are anything like some round here though they probably did get a letter or see the signs up on lamposts (or wherever) and never made comments or gave it a second  though until later down the line when they had a gripe to air.  

Maybe residents should just take their own action and take a note of the car regs each day with date and time then send it to company and each day they could also stick A3 paper signs on the windcreens of each car saying 'Polite notice.... please could [insert own words here] :wink::lol:

PS outside my house at the moment it someone's flat bed truck.  No big prob as it will move eventually :wink:    

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If I remember correctly, the first the residents knew about this was when the started doing the pelican crossing and it was suggested then that the area would become a car park for workers because there was not enough spaces at the workplace. The counter argument at the time was that workers would in the main be using public transport but looks like that may have been a bit optimistic.

 

It wouldn't be a problem for me either but older people spending all day having to look at parked cars it's understandably why they get upset. Suggesting they're just curtain twitchers that should get out more shows a lack of understanding of the elderly. What for us is a minor issue becomes the focus of their lives.

 

The law certainly isn't on their side so all these people can do is to complain to the company and let's hope they can get a satisfactory solution.

 

Bill :)

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The problem isn’t that the Home Office workers are parking in front of peoples houses, it is the fact that they are parking on a twisty residential road, on a blind bend making it extremely difficult, and dangerous, to enter or leave Burnett Close and Sage Close during the working day. They also try to be “helpful”” by parking with two wheels on the pavement making pedestrian access difficult.

 

When the office block was first planned, local Longbarn residents pointed out there was not going to be enough parking allocated for its size, and were assured that there would be no problem as a robust travel plan was being put in place where staff and visitors would be encouraged to travel by bus and train.

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Surely if they are parking on blind bends making it extremely dangerous that is a police matter....saying that if there's no markings there then perhaps it's not classed as an offence.

Makes me laugh when buildings or houses are approved to be built and designs statements and/or conditions say they are ok as long as there are 'robust travel plans in place' and that 'people are ENCOURAGED to travel by bus, train or bike'.

That doesn't mean they will or will have to.  It's their/our choice.

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IF on road parking is compromising the safety of road users, the Council have the option to put down double yellow lines and police it, might bring some revenues in !  The "robust travel plans" were a feature of the Planning Dept's wish- full thinking, and yet another case of ignoring reality.

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