Estate Parking

So today we had some friends visit and decided to get a visitors car permit during the week. My wife went to the Estate office on Tuesday as it seems that is no longer open on other days. Only to be told she needs ID and to go to Cheviot House instead.

On Friday she went to Cheviot house but could only buy a book of 10 tickets minimum. We hardly ever have visitors by car. These 10 tickets are only valid for a year and I doubt I will ever be able to finish using them.

Anyhow so after waiting halfan hour on Friday at Cheviot house mywife was told that they computers were down and they could not issue any tickets and to come back the next day.

Then Finally Saturday she got the tickets brought them home. When I looked at the tickets I noted they were only valid for Mini Zone C4. What on earth does that mean I wondered. Read all the information provided with the tickets and the smallprint on the back to try and figure out what this meant. On the back of the ticket it suggested these tickets are only valid for Tower Hamlets Parking and not valid for off street and private parking or Pay and Display Areas. It also says that it is not valid for Estates not run by Tower Hamlets. Now I thought Glamis Estate would fall into this category. It is after all being run by Eastendhomes. So I thought my wife had been fobbed off by eastendhomes to buy the wrong tickets at Tower Hamlets.

To double check I phoned the number at the bottom of the ticket “for any queries”. The number was answered and I was very rudely told that this number is only for emergencies. (So why put it on the bottom of tickets advising people to ring it without mentioning it is only valid at specific times)

Anyhow so I decided to go down to the parking area and read the signs to determine whether it was tower hamlets or eastenhomes that is responsible for the parking. I noted a car in the car park in an allocated bay with a eastendhomes permit in the window which suggested to me that the tower hamlets permit we received was incorrect.

I then walked over to read the parking signs and this also suggested that it was run by eastendhomes although there was a small mention of Tower Hamlets Civil Parking on the sign.

Later when our guests arrived I decided to just use the scratch card and hope for the best. After all I do not know which one of the few visitors parkings on our estate is in Mini Zone C4 so I will have take a chance and hope the vehicle is not towed away.

When trying to scratch the time on the scratchcard I realised there is only a 12 hour system on it without any means of specifying AM or PM. I double checked with my wife on how she thought it ought to be scratched and as it was from 18:00 she suggested scratching 1 and 8 plus 05 which would have invalidated the ticket.

I scratched out 6 and 05 and again hoped for the best.

After providing the ticket to our guests on their arrival I walked to another visitors parking bay to check what permit that vehicle was using and was only then re-assured when I noted he was using the same parking permit (or made the same mistake as I did)

I wonder how much thought they have put into this process to realise just how confusing all of this beurocracy is that they are creating for us. All of this just to allow some friends to come and visit.

Also. I note from the tickets that they are only valid for 5 hours on week nights. You can not use two tickets in succession. This makes it impossible for us to have visitors stay the night during the week?

I think this whole car park system is a complete waste of time and preferred to previous uncontrolled parking. I never had any problems finding parking.