TAPP

Last Updated 13th October 2003

T.A.P.P

(Traders Against Parking Persecution

T.A.P.P. was set up by the business community of Brighton and Hove in April 2002 following the work of Alan Sablon a local building contractor, promoting our cause through the local press and arranging a public meeting for those who sympathised with his concerns. Subsequently a committee was formed with the intention of representing traders, residents and businesses of the city against the imposition of the new parking policy inflicted on traders. The issues we are addressing are as follows:-

Consultation by the council with local traders to provide safe and adequate parking for traders going about their ligitimate business. (The council pays huge amounts of money to outside consultants, regarding the parking policy, who have no concept or interest in the problems faced by traders.
Use, by traders, of available resident's bays and voucher parking bays during the day at a reasonable charge.
Voucher parking for traders on yellow lines to eliminate the time wasted in waiver offices. Many proposals for alternatives along these lines have been suggested to the council. None have received due consideration. (The council only feels justified in promoting policies that they have paid vast portions of council tax payers money to outside agencies to dream up.)
7a.m. (at present 8.30am Brighton Office & 9:00am Hove Office.) opening of the waiver office.

The purpose of TAPP is to obtain a fair deal on parking charges for boni fide traders in the city who are experiencing great difficulty in operating to a level of service that they would like to afford their customers. Many have decided to work outside the restricted areas. All this has the effect of increased costs to customers and exacerberates the problem of residents and businesses finding trades people, when required, in an already depleated market place.

Why can the traders quarterly permit to park £75 per quarter for two hours not be extended as a trial to full day parking? It makes no sense to have to move a van one cars length every two hours to avoid parking fines.
Why can the parking shops not open at 7am? The wardens are working on the street at that time!
Why the large cost difference in charges? Health visitors, home helps, nurses and doctors pay £20 per year and residents pay £85 per year.
Waivers cost £3 per day. This equates to £780 per year parking charges added to the cost of jobs to clients/owners in the city, plus the time lost to collect these waivers.
The council have admitted they have messed up, but their consultants still have not contacted TAPP but are raking in tax payers money to do a totally insignificant survey.
Seeboard, Gas Board, BT. Waterboard & NTL appear to be exempt from any kind of waiver!

Councillor Simon Battle, representing the Transport Department, has stated that he has no interest in our cause and feels that the policies are totally fair.

Our only weapon to ensure that our voice is heard is in our legitimate right to protest. We have held a number of rallies in the city in the form of a slow drive through the city gaining full press and T.V. coverage. At the moment the city council. who had previously ignored our representation, agreed to a meeting with our committee. Unfortunately the consultations that we have had with the council have fallen far short of our expectations.

Councillor Battle and his cronies claim that we are using bullying tactics to promote our cause.

The traders of this city, most of who are also city council tax payers, contribute to a thriving local economy and are vital to the welfare of the residents and existing businesses and even more to new business wishing to set up and add to the local economy.

The City Council has employed an outside body, NCP, who add nothing to the local economy and uses them to squeeze additional revenue out of residents and businesses in the form of this ill conceived stealth tax.

WHO ARE THE BULLIES?

We are being penalised financially on top of the day-to-day difficulty of trying to park on the city's streets. We want the council to introduce a proper system of parking so that bona fide traders can get a waiver to park in the city for a minimal fee. The present pilot traders' permit parking scheme costs £300 a year, compared with £82 for residents, and allows workmen to park for up to two hours in restricted parking bays until 4pm. Under the strict new parking regime in Brighton and Hove, traffic wardens are giving £30 and £60 tickets to all vehicles they find infringing parking regulations.

Brighton and Hove City Council have comissioned independent consultants JMP who are carrying out a review of the city's parking but the review is set to take six months and we want our demands addressed sooner.

Please support and promote our cause.

We welcome onboard PRAG (Parking Reform Action Group) in Canterbury, and we are pleased to form an alliance between our protest groups in both cities. We also are please to announce another website which aims to point out cases where we, the public, feel that decisions made by Traffic Wardens to hand out tickets have been unfair and unjust. Wanna have your say? They've kindly given us our own forum so pop along now and register your complaints and views.

CAUTIOUS ABOUT PROTESTING?

While businesses in BRIGHTON & HOVE are joining the TAPP protest, some are more cautious. We are aware of the sensitivities of all sectors of our community, in seeking a thorough reform of the present parking policies of the Council, and will not allow the Council any opportunity to divide businesses and residents here in Brighton & Hove.

Brighton & Hove businesses are the major voice in TAPP because they bothered to show some commitment to challenge a regime that they find unworkable. If you are affected by these issues as a trader yourself, or you live in another area in the UK where similar council practices are happening there, please add your support to this site. It costs nothing to join us and this protest will benefit both residents and businesses when we have succeeded in our goal.

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