From Andrée Frieze, Leader of the Opposition and Ham, Petersham & Richmond Riverside Green Councillor:
At Richmond Council’s Policy and Performance Review Board (PPRB) meeting this week, Councillors ‘noted’ the change in its Vehicle Crossover Policy to make it easier to pave over front gardens in the borough, having set the changes in motion last May.
As Leader of the Opposition, I spoke against it, having already voted against it at the Transport & Air Quality Committee in November.
One of the reasons this policy was brought to PPRB, was because the Council wants to tackle unauthorised crossovers into front gardens, which it estimates to be nearly 2,000.
But, rather than enforce a strong policy that provided good outcomes for nature and the climate crisis, the Council decided to enable householders to make it easier to destroy habitats, store carbon-emitting vehicles and introduce uneven surfaces for people walking and wheeling on pavements.
Flooding concerns
Officers said that permeable surfaces and/or grilles will be required to ensure flood risk is not increased. Yet, there is plenty of evidence to show that permeable surfacing does not stop rainwater run-off into road drains, particularly during deluges, because grilles get filled with debris or just overflow. This creates a higher risk of local surface water flooding, which parts of the borough suffers from already. Plus, the run-off puts extra pressure on local drains and sewers, and results in more herbicides, microplastics and other pollutants entering local rivers and groundwaters. All of which ends up costing taxpayers to clean up.
Shockingly, the report that came to the Transport & Air Quality Committee didn’t mention flooding. Why not? Had officers even looked into the impact of additional hard surfacing on surface flooding? Given this is one of the main outcomes from getting rid of natural habitat, this should have been a consideration.
Then there’s the 10 per cent soft landscaping required in the front gardens when they’re paved over by the new policy. At the Transport & Air Quality Committee I enquired how this figure was decided upon. It’s a political judgement, I was told. So there’s no policy reason or data analysis for it. A figure was chosen because it seemed appropriate. How will the Council enforce the ten per cent soft landscaping and permeable surfaces and grilles? It won’t. Just like it hasn’t enforced illegal crossovers this policy is trying to fix.
Safety and active travel
At the same Transport & Air Quality Committee, safety was given as a reason for changing this policy. Residents who live on a street where cars park on both sides of the road, impacting sightlines, raised concerns about speeding vehicles. Surely, removing cars from parking on either side of the road will increase the ability of drivers to speed thereby reducing safety. While at the same time increasing danger to pedestrians who are walking on the pavement and will have to navigate uneven pavements from dropped kerbs and cars backing out from paved-over front gardens.
I am really concerned that the Council has been held hostage by small groups of residents who have lobbied Councillors hard to get the restrictions on dropped kerbs replaced, so they can pave over and park on what was once an oasis for birds, bugs and bees.
Contrary to other policies
In the Council’s Climate Emergency strategy, it says:
“We will change our approach to travel in the borough, encouraging a shift away from cars towards more sustainable, low carbon and active forms of travel.”
In the Council’s new Draft Local Plan it says:
“Policies and strategies are expected to focus on creating streets that are pleasant, safe and attractive, where noise, air pollution, accessibility and lack of seating and shelter are not barriers to prevent people – particularly the most vulnerable people – from getting out and about.”
Yet, this policy change does the exact opposite of both these, as front garden parking makes it easier for households to own, park and drive a car, and even to accommodate more than one car. Making car parking easier, electric or not, is simply taking us in the wrong direction.
Too much car traffic has left London with poisonous air and sky-high carbon emissions. That’s why London’s transport strategy aims to reduce the proportion of trips made by car from 40 per cent to 20 per cent by 2041. This policy does not help with that at all.
Bringing in electric vehicles is already being accommodated in Richmond by one of the highest number of lamp post charge points being installed in London. It does not need to be further enabled by letting residents pave over more front gardens, when electric cars still cause congestion and pollution on our roads with the long term health impacts these cause. The Council is looking to do gully trials to run cables from homes to roads – it should be speeding these up as it’s cheaper and less destructive than enabling crossovers.
It’s also selfish – putting in dropped kerbs stops other vehicles from parking on the streets, thereby reducing the parking available to visitors, deliveries and tradespeople. Removing the parking stress test from this new policy is also really regressive.
In fact, this whole change in policy by the Liberal Democrat administration is taking the borough backwards, and simply allows more of our precious nature and biodiversity to be replaced by lumps of metal parked on hard standing.
