After
bragging about Bexley having the cheapest parking in South East London - which
anyone who visits the nearest out of borough shopping centres will know is
a lie - councillor Craske has become a little more cunning. Four days before the
event he announced that parking would be free on Christmas Eve in some of Bexley’s
car parks - not all of them - and not at street parking facilities. Now he is going
to be able to claim that Bexley had free Christmas parking when thanks to the short
notice it may have cost him very little.
Various readers reported that some parking ticket machines bore a Christmas notice but others
didn’t and not unnaturally motorists are not too keen to trust Bexley council so paid up.
Reports suggests that about half of car park users were paying, and if it hadn’t
been for the public spirited citizens who were advising those who hadn’t visited
the council’s website in the preceding few days, it may have been many more.
Several paid as much as £2·30. I’m not sure how much
time that buys because off street parking charges have disappeared from the parking
services menu on Bexley’s website. Only on-street parking
is listed, maybe it helps councillor Craske hide his “cheapest in SE London” fib?
Tickets submitted include examples from both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. An
honest council that really wanted to not charge for parking over Christmas would
have turned the power off or covered the cash machines with one of the yellow out
or order bags. But that requires an honest council.
Some readers may remember Councillor Linda Bailey being reported in the press that
she had sought
funding from the Mayor for free Christmas parking. You probably
won’t be surprised to hear that a Freedom of Information response from the Mayor’s
Office says she did no such thing.
