Parking consultation
Consultation information: Air Quality Update to Parking Policies and Procedures
Addressing poor air quality, the climate emergency and emissions from vehicles is at the heart of a set of ambitious parking proposals Newham Council is seeking to introduce.
The parking proposals are aimed at encouraging residents to switch towards less polluting vehicles and to encourage more local trips to be made by sustainable modes of transport.
In 2019, the Council declared a climate emergency and published a 25-point action plan to address the challenges of poor air quality in the borough, including measures to reduce the amount of pollution created by vehicles.
Emissions from vehicles are the major contributor to the Borough’s poor air quality and parking policies and procedures have the ability to influence the number, type and the use of vehicles in an area and can be an important tool in delivering behavioural change and air quality improvement.
The Council’s parking policies do not currently meet air quality or public health objectives and have not been reviewed since 2012.
The Mayor of London has also, through the Mayor’s Transport Strategy, set targets for Newham to reduce the number of vehicle kilometres driven and car ownership in the borough (a reduction of 15% and of 10,000 vehicles by 2041.)
Following a series of focus groups and consultation with residents and businesses, a new set of parking policies has been developed to improve our poor air quality and encourage behaviour change.
The proposals were approved by Cabinet in February 2020.
The parking policy aims to:
- Incentivise Cleaner Vehicles: encouraging residents to switch to less polluting vehicles by introducing differential residential and business parking permit charges, based on the vehicle’s emissions.
- Promote Lower Car Ownership: increasing parking permit charges for multiple vehicles registered at a single address, with every household vehicle now being subject to an emission-based charge.
- Improve Sustainable and Active Travel: encouraging walking, cycling or public transport for local trips by increasing existing parking charges (both on street and off-street), and making cleaner and healthier travel a more attractive option.
Newham Parking Policy
The parking policy aims to improve air quality in the Borough by differentiating between the pollution generated by different vehicle types. It also seeks to discourage multi-vehicle ownership in single households and dissuade car trips for shorter journeys that could easily be made by other modes.
To ensure the economic vitality of town centres and to support local businesses, the policy also seeks to provide parking opportunities for Borough residents in local centres and shopping areas. It also seeks to provide adequately for visitors, including carers, health visitors, medicine deliveries and other socially essential trips.
Read the parking policy paper.
Read the February 2020 cabinet paper.
Consultation update:
The results of the informal public consultation carried out in March 2020 resulted in 4,832 responses.
There were a series of questions posed about the council’s parking policy proposals. The majority of responses were focussed on introduction of, or an increase in parking charges.
- 88.6% did not support the introduction of emissions-based permit parking charges to help improve air quality.
- 7.7% supported the introduction of emissions-based permit charges.
- 3.75% were undecided.
An overview of the consultation responses is available in this report.
The latest consultation results follow an earlier informal public consultation, comprised of Citizen’s Assembly events held in Spring 2019, which found:
- 62% wanted measures specifically introduced to significantly reduce car emissions in Newham.
- 67% of participants were unaware that children could become ill from breathing in car fumes;
- 65% supported the need to bring down Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) pollution emissions generally;
- 45% believed Newham would be a nicer place with less cars;
As a result of both informal consultations, the feedback shows that residents have concern about the number of vehicles and the air quality in Newham, but when confronted with the actual measures to address they are less likely to want to support taking action.
Cars are a large contributor to the poor air quality in Newham and it is necessary and appropriate that measures are adopted that use financial incentives to encourage people to change the way they travel around the borough using greener travel options, walking and cycling.
The council held a statutory consultation on emissions-based charging that closed in July 2020.
The outcome of that consultation can be found here.