Healthy Streets, Healthy Travel: Cleaner, Fairer Parking
Camden council is holding a consultation to hear the views of our residents, businesses and visitors on suggested changes to how we manage motor vehicle parking in Camden, including how we charge for parking and the terms and conditions of some products.
We are reviewing our current parking schemes to further promote the use of cleaner and more carbon-efficient vehicles, improve access for elderly and disabled residents, support low-income residents and small businesses, and looking to use kerbside space in Camden in new, greener ways.
We need to seize every opportunity we can to make Camden a more sustainable, carbon-neutral borough. I therefore urge everyone – whether they regularly use a motor vehicle or not – to complete the consultation.
Camden Council provides a range of support for residents to assist them with the cost of living, but as part of this package of measures we will be looking to further extend assistance to older and disabled residents.
Existing offers include discounted permits for older resident and the comprehensive blue badge scheme. We also promote more affordable forms of travel such as bus use and are working hard to make walking and cycling more accessible to everyone.
Camden Council also already provides a range of existing support for local businesses, including business rate discounts and exemptions for small businesses and charities and tax relief and allowances for businesses, employers and the self-employed.
The consultation proposes a comprehensive set of support, including:
- Phasing in parking charges for small businesses and non-profit organisations.
- Investigating options to allow for those residents and businesses to be able to pay by direct debit for their permits.
- Extending visitor parking for elderly and disabled residents who live south of the Euston Road area.
- Extending the permit-scrappage scheme, which offers free car club membership for two years for residents deciding not to renew their permit.
Changing the type of vehicles in the borough brings with it a range of health and social benefits.
Councillor Anna Wright, Cabinet Member for Health, Wellbeing and Adult Social Care said:
“We are striving to improve air quality throughout the borough to better protect the health and wellbeing of all who live, work and study in Camden.
“These proposals, would help to improve road safety and air quality as well as helping to free up road space to encourage an increase in walking, cycling and public transport use. We are also proposing a range of options to ensure that that our older and disabled residents and visitors continue to be able to easily travel around the borough.”
Councillor Marcus Boyland, Cabinet Member for Best Start for Children and Families said:
“We want to help our children get to and from school safely, breathe cleaner air and make more space outside for them to play and be active safely.
“Health and sustainable travel are at the heart of our approach to this. We aim to increase the level of walking, cycling and public transport use and reduce car dependency to address the problems of congestion, poor air quality, carbon emissions and climate change that directly impact on our children.”
Following the consultation, the findings will be reported to the Council’s Cabinet in February 2024, along with other supporting evidence, to consider. These proposals, if approved will then come into effect from April 2024. The consultation runs until Sunday 5 November 2023.