So it's not a great idea to drive in Islington these days! Having read that the council raised £26 million through parking permit, fines and pay and display I thought I'd share some thoughts.
I don't drive around Islington myself and while I do have a car that is mainly used to travel outside of London so personally I'm not really affected by a lot of the parking charges that Islington council enforces. However it does seem a little strange that the smallest boroughs in London it also one of the most prolific when it comes to collecting fines. If fact Islington is ranked number 6 out of the countries 371 boroughs.
Hackney by comparison has a much larger area and nearly 50,000 more people yet only collected £12.6 million through parking fines and collections. This leads to the obvious question as to why they are so high and what it the point. As I spend a lot of time with local businesses it is a constant grip for many that there are just no places for some one to park if they are going to visit a shop in the area. Now this is generally ok if you're doing a bit of clothes shopping but if you need a larger item like furniture or home equipment then it does become a problem.
I've said before that driving cars in central London places like Islington isn't always a good idea but there does seem to be a campaign to get as much money as possible out of motorist in the borough. Regular readers will remember me mentioning the junction by Islington Green that seemed to designed (or at least mis-designed) to catch and fine cars as they went through creating a huge amount of fines.
Hopefully there may be a little bit respite on the way as the council says they are going to be creating more parking bays in the area but I'm guessing these won't be new parking spaces and will just be creating more places where they can charge.
Anyway there's a little rant from me today and I'll write something a bit more fun for my next blog :)
P.S for some places to park in Islington click here
