A new parking scheme has “divided the community”, causing chaos and fights according to a residents’ representative.
Ian Beck, from Hollingdean Residents’ Association, spoke out about the new south Hollingdean parking scheme before a Brighton and Hove City Council housing management panel meeting.
At the meeting on Tuesday (June 9), Mr Beck said that he had broken up fights between people over parking spaces and had never received as many complaints about any issue in the area over ten years.
He said: “This parking scheme has turned the north of Hollingdean against the south of Hollingdean. This has created a north-south divide because the north hasn’t got a parking scheme. The south has.
“What’s actually happening now is people are stuck going further up Davey Drive, in Hollingdean, and they’re parking in the north area and there’s people parking on double yellow lines, in residents’ parking bays, blocking bus routes. This is causing absolute chaos.
“The residents of Hollingdean would like an open meeting about this because this scheme is not what we asked for in the first place. We asked for a light-touch scheme.
“People could park in Hollingdean but not people who were staying there for several days at a time.”
The scheme, labelled zone 14, has 750 parking spaces which Mr Beck said was not enough to serve the 19,000 residents in the area.
He asked if anyone involved with setting up the scheme would come and look at the problems it had caused.
A written response to concerns before the meeting from the parking scheme project manager Anthony Patchett said that details had been shared with Labour councillor Trevor Muten, the council’s cabinet member for transport and city infrastructure.
He said that the scheme was operating at 61 per cent capacity although this figure did not reflect the availability on every street.
Mr Patchett added: “We note the concerns raised regarding the availability of parking for residents, the difficulties experienced by visitors and reports of tension between neighbours.
“While residents’ permits allow parking across the whole zone, we appreciate this may not always feel convenient in practice.”
The housing management panel was told that the comments from the meeting would be shared with parking services who would be asked to visit the area.
