Parking laws damaging Wimbledon Village high street Wimbledon Village chains are hopeful that the proposed relaxation of parking restrictions will be given the all clear as the council had been put under major pressure by shops of the area to remove the parking restrictions before it “put the shops out of business.”
The parking restrictions, on and around Church Road in Wimbledon Village, used to allow parking and brief stops to go to the shops on the high street. Nowadays however, the parking restrictions now state that there is to be no parking or stopping in the area before 10 am and between 4 and 6 pm.
The reasoning behind the change, according to Merton council, was to try to alleviate the chance of grid lock in the Village during these times as they are had been identified as times of heightened bus activity with children going to and from school in the local area. If people were parking on the streets as well then it would just block both ways.
The measures have received huge opposition from shop owners and workers in the area as it restricting the flexibility and use of access to the shops. The shop owner of the newsagent has said that his business in the mornings has dropped by “around 60%” as people can no longer park outside if they want to pick up the mornings newspaper or other item and are instead driving to other newsagents to get them. It also means it becomes increasing difficult to get in supplies and stock into the shops as the supply trucks are unable to stop outside the shops.
I also spoke to worker in the local estate agency, who said that business was becoming increasing difficult to get to their customers. She told me of one instance when an electrician needed to pick up a set of keys for a house to fix the electrics before the house could be sold but he wasn’t allowed to pick up the keys as traffic wardens were patrolling the area. She said that the new restrictions were “putting pay to hours of service.”
Traffic wardens are perhaps no the ones to blame for implementing the new laws very strictly as their pay does fluctuate with the number of tickets they give but the system needs to be changed. There is a potential change to the system which is said to have been approved to relax the hours and implementation of the rule so this could be the answer. But until put in place, you just don’t know.
Ben Fielding-Jones Wimbledon Village
