Permits - Is that your final answer?

Barnet Council are shockingly bad at figures. Here are part of the answers sent to the CPZ Action Group in respect of Resident Parking permits. The answers were from two different officers, the more senior one first and then a junior one.

The answer dated 28 December 2011

2011/12 (to date)
Number of residents permits sold = 9,510

2010/11
Number of residents permits sold  = 13,453

The answer dated 31 January 2012

18/04/2011 to 07/01/2012
Number of residents permits sold = 8,825

2010/11 -  01/04/2010 to 31/03/2011
Number of residents permits sold  = 13,453

Let us put these numbers in a table and project the annual sales on a straight line basis.

From	To	Number	Days	Per day	Full year
01/04/2011	28/12/2011	9,510	272	34.96	12,762
18/04/2011	07/01/2012	8,825	265	33.30	12,155

So how many were sold in the year ended 31 March 2011?

13,453 according to the two FOI answers.

13,056 according to Brian Coleman in a written answer. An officer will have looked the answer up for him.

Mr Mustard is having trouble believing any figures that come from Barnet Council. He can't think of a good reason why permits would go down from 09/10 to 10/11 as the price didn't change in those 2 years so is more inclined to accept the 13,453. If that is correct then the number of sales projected for 2011/12 are down by either 5% or by nearly 10% dependant upon which of the full year numbers in the table above is nearer to the truth.

What is crystal clear though ( unless every statistic is wrong and that would be just plain embarrassing ) is that sales of annual permits to residents have reduced and this is an understandable effect of increasing the price by 150%. Somewhere in the range of 700 to 1300 residents have simply not renewed their permits.

There people will either be parking at the edge of the zone ( the Saint Albans Road is now always heavily parked up ) or are parking in their front garden instead which is making the borough a less green place. Barnet Council is very lax when it comes to allowing parking in front gardens with the requirement seen in almost every other borough to have a space the size of a typical saloon not being the case in Barnet and, if the top of Totteridge Lane is a guide, with cars frequently crammed into small front gardens where there isn't a lowered kerb and also with the body of the car overhanging the pavement to the detriment of the blind, pushchair and wheelchair users, enforcement does not occur. It is also an eyesore which is a surprise to see tolerated in the Totteridge ward.

So there we have it. Why it is called OneBarnet when there is never just the one answer is beyond Mr Mustard.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard