This
illegally parked van nearly caused an accident this morning. It forced traffic
to the wrong side of the road at the T junction which is at the camera position.
Yet another white van came from that direction far too fast and over the white
line by four or five feet. A head on collision was narrowly avoided and the van
driver had to reverse into Abbey Road.
I didn’t report the yellow line parking because it is all a bit of a rigmarole
and Bexley Council doesn’t accept phone reports any more.
Mr. Dimitri Shvorob asked
a question
about that at the last Council meeting and was told the withdrawal of phone
facilities didn’t have much impact on ticketing levels. What he wasn’t told was
the exact numbers of reports involved.
After failing to get them from Council sources he wrote to the Cabinet
Member Richard Diment. Dimitri has not always agreed with me that Richard is one
of the good guys and when I used the term ‘straight bat’ about him in a blog Dimitri was at first sceptical.
However I think I have won him over. Dimitri wrote to Richard who willingly provided the
information that had previously been denied. The number of bad parking reports in
the twelve months leading up to withdrawal of phone reporting is as follows.
That is only about three a day.
The cynics will say that being more helpful than his predecessor Councillor Peter Craske is not a huge achievement but I have found
it to be so consistent that it must be in the DNA. When the local Elizabeth line
parking issues were at their height I wrote to Richard too and his response could not have been more helpful.
I have written to Cabinet Members before but the only ones who ever replied were
Alex Sawyer and Rob Leitch. It is probably no coincidence that both subsequently walked
or were pushed. Careful now Richard.
Note: A different context perhaps but I also wrote to
Councillor Gower to congratulate her on the Cabinet appointment and she replied in a friendly manner too.