NEWS: Plans to introduce new hours of control on evenings and Sundays in the West End have been withdrawn.

Find out more. 

In 2010, Westminster City Council undertook a major public consultation into parking in the city, involving thousands of residents, businesses and specialist organisations such as faith groups and representatives of the music, entertainment and retail industries. The council has also carried out a full review of parking provision across the city that has included a public survey on parking priorities, traffic counts on key Westminster roads, and a study of how, when and where parking spaces across the city are used. 

On 1st August 2011, Cabinet formally approved a number of new parking measures developed by council officers as a result of this review.

What are the new measures?

The new measures address a number of complex issues to ensure the city’s busiest streets and roads are able to accommodate the sheer amount of traffic driving through, and include: 

• managing the traffic demands of the West End
• improving the availability of resident and visitor parking
• improving loading and waiting facilities 
• a review of green transportation initiatives, such as electric charging point bays and car club provision.

Protecting residents’ parking bays north of Oxford Street with 24-hour, seven-day-a-week controls is one of the measures. It comes after calls from residents that large numbers of people shopping and visiting the West End were making it increasingly difficult to park in a residents’ bays in the evening.

In addition, the council will extend ‘hours of control’ from Monday to Saturday until midnight in Zones E and G and between 13:00-18:00 on Sundays in Zones E, G , F3 and F6. You can see the area covered by these zones here.

The controls will only apply to a small part of central London, meaning people who need to drive into the West End during these times would still be able to park their car for free on streets approximately five to 10 minutes walk away.

Extended controls would also include the concession that the cost of any extended evening parking would be discounted by 50% from Monday to Thursday and disabled blue and white badge holders would be allowed to park on single yellow lines during any extended hours of control.

Other measures include:

• Introducing a higher rate for second or third resident parking permits
• Introducing more taxi hubs and marshalled taxi ranks in the city 
• Reviewing the current visitors permit scheme with a view to introduce a city-wide scheme if appropriate
• Providing more ‘shared use’ loading bays and improving loading times for commercial deliveries, particularly in the West End
• Extending double yellow lines where appropriate to assist emergency vehicles and reduce congestion
• Looking at increasing, where appropriate, the provision of green modes of transport including electric charging points and the council’s car club scheme

• Introducing a provision for residents societies, local businesses, and organisations to review parking controls of their local are

When will the new measures be implemented? 

The proposals will be introduced on an experimental basis for a period of up to 18 months to test their effectiveness, with any changes expected to be implemented by December 2011.

You can read the full Cabinet report and background papers here

Background

Westminster is the UK's largest parking authority and we are proud of our track record in delivering innovative improvements to our service. Our parking service is important to the city's economic and social wellbeing: facilitating deliveries and commercial operations, providing parking facilities for residents and visitors, and helping people to get around freely and easily.

If you have any enquiries about the Westminster Parking Policy Review, please contact parkingreview2010@westminster.gov.uk or call 020 7823 4567