Trying to kerb anger

Whist I would agree that dangerous parking and obstruction of accesses should be policed, there is little doubt in my mind that the London authorities have drafted, and pushed through Parliament, section 14 of the London Local Authorities and Transport for London Act 2003 in order to confer on themselves the legal right to raise additional revenue from stealth taxes by further persecution of the users of motor vehicles.

As far as I can see the main change is in the enforcement authority, which will be the local authorities instead of the police.

The inevitable result of this will be to deprive residents from making amicable parking arrangements amongst themselves around their properties and leave themselves open to prosecution by the army of parasitic predators who will be dispatched by the councils to get a living by seeking out offenders and deprive honest, hardworking citizens of their just rewards for making a contribution to the economy.

Formerly, unless the offence was serious, police would only respond to complaints of obstruction and were likely to seek a resolution of the problem without resorting to the imposition of penalties.

Drafted into the regulations are a couple of clauses designed to increase the incidence of offences being committed. There is one that certainly implies that if a single use access is not registered then any Joe Soap has a legal right to park there. This will certainly frighten people into registering their access, to keep it open, without considering the wider implications.

There is also drafted in the legislation that there is no requirement for the councils to sign those accesses having a parking restriction, thus making drivers from foreign parts like Kent, Essex, Surrey, etc fair game for fleecing.

These two examples substantiate that the regulations are designed to raise revenue.

There is a slight inaccuracy in Linda's report. There are written in, albeit inadequate, concessions to tradesmen, emergency services, utility and council contractors and even residents. However, I see none for doctors (unless classed as an emergency visit), district nurses, carers nor, interestingly, parking attendants. Therefore many will be persecuted while administering 'services' to the community. However, this may not matter in the long run because over regulation is systematically destroying our communities.

Our road, through earlier ill-conceived regulation of pavement parking, has become almost one continuous length of dropped kerb on each side of the street. It is therefore about to become a complete 'no parking' (or, if I read the legislation right, 'no stopping') zone, and likely to deprive us of the use of many services and visits from family and friends. For this the London authorities, with the possible exception of Barnet which tries to serve its community, all deserve the award of Asbos.

In cases such as ours it would have been more constructive to have granted residents the further concession for them or their visitors to park two wheels up on their accesses. Can't do this though, it would ease problems for the community, help the traffic flow and deprive the council of opportunities to levy penalties.

A J Canning, address supplied