Conservative councillor Mitchell Goldie slams the previous Labour-run council’s handling of a consultation on 15 minute free parking, and hopes the Greens will do better
Waltham Forest Council asked residents 18 months ago what they thought about scrapping the 15 minutes free parking on our high streets.
89% of respondents said no, do not remove it, but the council pressed ahead anyway.
It was only recently, when I asked a question at full council, that residents learned what that exercise had actually cost. The answer was close to £150,000 of taxpayers’ money, all of it spent finding out what people thought before being ignored completely.
That is not a proper consultation; it is a very expensive way of telling residents their opinion does not matter.
6,000 people signed a petition against the changes and the council’s own climate scrutiny committee heard from dozens of Chingford residents in person.
None of it changed the outcome, because the decision had already been made and the consultation existed to tick a box rather than shape a policy.
We warned at the time that real damage would be done. Local independent business owners came to full council in person and told councillors directly that removing the free parking would hurt their businesses.
They were not vague warnings, they came from people who knew their customers and knew what a few minutes of free parking meant for their footfall. Those warnings were ignored too, just like the consultation.
The 15 minutes of free parking did something simple but valuable. It allowed local residents to stop and pop in, and it let people driving through our high streets pull over for a few minutes to grab a coffee, buy a chocolate bar, or drop something off at the dry cleaners.
It was never about long stays, it was about the small, everyday visits that keep a high street ticking over. Take that away, and those small visits simply stop happening.
The results have been exactly what residents and traders warned they would be.
Shopkeepers along our high streets tell me they have lost regular customers who used to pop in for a few minutes without needing to log onto an app, put in banking details, and make sure the right location is selected.
Instead, residents tell me they now drive out to the large retail parks in Enfield, Waltham Abbey and Loughton, where they can park for free, rather than use their own local high street.
Payments are also online only now, with no paper vouchers, which has made things harder still for some of our elderly residents. Altogether, this is worse for our high streets, and worse for local jobs.
Episodes like this have done real damage to public trust. Residents were asked their opinion, told it would be considered, and then watched it be discarded regardless.
Business owners stood up in public and were ignored too. When that happens, people stop believing consultations mean anything, and they stop believing politicians when they say they are listening. That loss of trust does not repair itself, it has to be rebuilt deliberately and visibly.
Since May, Waltham Forest has had a new administration, and I want to give credit where it is due.
The Green council has shown a genuine willingness to listen so far, and I was glad to see the new leader, councillor Paul Perkins, out visiting shops in Chingford recently to hear directly from traders about the pressures they are facing. That kind of engagement was exactly what was missing under the last administration, and it is a welcome change in tone.
The new administration now has a genuine opportunity, one that Labour squandered, to show residents that being listened to actually means something again.
That starts with commissioning a full, honest review on the decision making, implementation and the impact of these parking changes, and reinstating the 15 minutes free parking.
Then, critically, it means acting on what residents say.
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