Concern over parking permit '˜abuse'

Sloane Court representative Tony McCoy told a Brighton and Hove City Council housing panel how his neighbours were fighting a battle to put people off keeping permits by fixing them to A4 sheets of paper with their flat number.

Mr McCoy is concerned that some permits were being misused by contractors after being handed to them but then not returned to residents.

Council officers accepted that abuse of parking permits was a problem across the city centre.

Of the seven visitors parking spaces at the block in Park Street, Mr McCoy said that four or five were occupied by American Express workers with visitors permits each day.

He said: “We’re so sick of it. We saw them park up and followed them.”

Housing services operations manager Hilary Edgar said that the authority operated a “three strikes” policy when it came to monitoring abuse of visitors permits.

The council has since confirmed that it rents six parking bays in Sloane Court and Leach Court to American Express workers.

The council said: “Our customer services team will be contacting the person who raised these concerns with a view to gaining the evidence we would need to investigate whether our permit system is being used legitimately or not.

“The supply of parking bays in this car park currently exceeds the number of  residents wishing to rent them.”

Priority is given to people living in the flats if they wish to rent spaces.

The council added: “Parking enforcement was introduced to this car park because of residents’ complaints that non-residents, including Amex staff, were parking in the then free and unrestricted car parking areas.

“Our parking bay licences for Amex are such that we would cancel them if demand for parking bays among Sloane Court/Leach Court residents were to increase to the extent that there was a shortage.”