The section below addresses the worsening state of pavement parking outside Kervan restaurant in Southgate. The council officer has responded to my questions individually and they are in bold, whilst my original email with comments is in normal text / font.
Oringinal email with response:
Dear Enquires Team and all CCd,
I would like to bring to your attention an issue in Southgate which although has brough embarrassment to the borough the first three times it was reported, the issue remains unresolved and is getting worse by the day.
I am talking about the issue of parking outside Kervan Restaurant on Chase Road, Southgate N14. Ever since the introduction of the reformed parking area for the restaurant we have seen a surge in illegal parking and customers of the restaurant taking advantage of the pavement- which as we all know is for pedestrians- to go and get their takeaway.
Honest question here and forgive me I might come off as sarcastic:
- Do Enfield Council actually have a parking enforcement department that is responsible for ticketing such vehicles?
Parking Services have received complaints about the restaurant and regularly attend the location and have issued 29 Penalty Charge Notices so far this month and 140 since the turn of the year in Chase Road. I can confirm that we issued to vehicles in Chase Side on each of the dates that the images were taken (but not to the particular vehicles shown on the Twitter links). We will continue to attend the location and robustly enforce when vehicles are seen in contravention.
- Do Enfield Council not have a highways department that can see the issue is persistent and not being resolved?
Highway Officers inspect this area as part of their routine highway inspections.
The Highways department has previously installed quite a few bollards at this location to prevent vehicles from parking on, and driving across, the pavement. Bollards have not been installed immediately in front of the property where there is a bus stop and pedestrian dropped kerb. We have estimated that we would need to install another 30 bollards if we want to be absolutely sure that we have prevented vehicles from parking illegally ensuring that the bollards are at a maximum of 1.8m centres. This issue is therefore best dealt with by the Council’s Parking Enforcement Team as described above and in collaboration with the premises owners as described below rather than installing even more bollards.
- Do Enfield Council more importantly have a social media team of a decent level or did we just get someone in for work experience and hope for the best??? Because from the chain below its unacceptable that a resident has posted eleven times the same situation and yet the department are failing and refusing in fact to address the issue!
Enfield Council’s communications team has a number of priorities and tasks and one of these includes the monitoring of social media. We do not have an officer solely on social media duty. We can confirm that Mario Sergides’s (@Mazzer993’s) complaints about parking in the Southgate area were passed on to customer services who in turn contacted parking enforcement. We cannot respond to every tweet that tags in Enfield Council and repeatedly asks the same question. Note that responses were given to Mario Sergides’s tweets on 6th, 9th and 10th September. We confirmed his complaint had been passed on to parking enforcement. We also responded to similar comments from Mario Sergides that were publicly made on Twitter in August. The issue therefore was addressed.
I enquire into addressing the issue with yourselves and the Chief Executive who I believe deserves to know that the social media and parking teams are quite frankly not doing their job properly.
My request – immediate bollards or camera enforcing on the pavement and a revoking of Kervan’s license for outdoor seating so they must use their own car park as before.
An officer visited Kervan on the 23rd September and spoke to the owner. All the tables and chairs are on private land (car park) and not on the highway therefore they do not need a pavement or tables and chairs licence as these are only used to licence the land owned by the council. (Photos attached taken at tine of visit)
The premises have an agreement with Asda for their customers to use Asda carpark out of hours. The owner said he will put a sign up at the premises directing customers not to park on the pavement which has happened at times.
Unfortunately, most vehicles park for a short period of time before driving off so enforcement is only possible when an officer is in attendance. The government banned the use of camera enforcement for vehicles parked on the footway in 2014.
Links Below:
https://twitter.com/Mazzer993/status/1437833232360292357?s=20 – Enfield Council was not tagged into this post
https://twitter.com/Mazzer993/status/1429390444937482240?s=20 – Repeat Post
