Transport & Streets
A CPZ provides your local council with the legal means it needs to control parking within a designated area. All roads included within a CPZ will therefore be subject to some form of parking control.
The hours of operation will vary depending on the method of control used but as a general guide will be between 8.00am to 6.30pm, Monday to Saturday. The CPZ will NOT be in operation on Sundays or Bank Holidays.
There are two categories of parking control you will encounter within the CPZ. These are yellow lines (waiting restrictions/prohibitions) and the Residential/Visitor parking bays, which are marked out with white lines and enforced by Hertsmere Civil Enforcement Officers (previously known as parking attendants or traffic wardents).
Hertsmere Borough Council needed to introduce CPZ schemes to address the increasing parking/traffic related problems experienced by residents and businesses. The main aim of the CPZs introduced so far has been to discourage commuters and long stay parking by non residents in an area.
Advanced road signs will inform you when you are entering and leaving a CPZ area. Each different type of parking control can be identified from the various road signs (or plates) that have been specially erected on posts or mounted on lamp columns.
Residents who live within a CPZ and have parking bays within their road, can apply for residential permits. Residents can apply for more than one permit if required but a charge will be made for additional permits. Residential parking bays will be provided in most of the residential streets within the CPZ area and can be identified by road signs. Holders of resident parking permits can park in these bays in their road, although this does not mean that residents will have the legal right to park their vehicle(s) immediately outside of their house in an allocated parking space. There will be a letter on the permit that will be the same as the one on the signs.
Each resident parking permit issued will only be valid for a specific registered vehicle. You will need to supply proof of ownership as part of your application such as a copy of your vehicle registration document. If you drive a vehicle, which has been supplied by your employer, a letter of endorsement from the Company concerned will be required. A resident parking permit will also be required if you own a motorcycle and wish to park it on the public highway in a CPZ.
Anybody who parks in a resident parking bay will need to display a valid permit. In the case of health visitors, doctors or other essential services, special permits can be applied for by the organisation for this purpose. Visitors to relatives and friends who live in the CPZ area and need to park in a resident parking bay, will need to display a Visitors parking permit in the windscreen.
A book of 20 half-day visitor parking permits will be issued free annually and where eligible, households issued with a residential permit/s can purchase a book or additional books of 20 half-day resident visitor parking permits, at a cost of £5 for each book. Full instructions on their use are given on each visitor permit.
Hertsmere Borough Council has the full responsibility for in introducing Controlled Parking Zones.
The council receives a large number of complaints from residents informing us that they are having a problem with non-residents parking in their road or similar, and asking that measures such as a Controlled Parking Zones (CPZ) are introduced. If problems are reported on the grounds of safety then it will be the responsibility of Hertfordshire County Council, the Highway Authority, to consider any need for introducing yellow lines or other measures. Residents and business need to contact them directly.
In view of the large number of requests, a list of requests is prioritised every year in the order in which schemes are progressed. This is done in consultation with the Council’s Community Safety and Transport Portfolio Holder. There are three priorities.
PRIORITY 1 – Cases where there are urgent access issues, such as emergency services or other vehicles are unable to enter a road. These are fairly straightforward and very limited consultation is required. These are very unlikely to be opposed during formal and informal consultation stages.
PRIORITY 2 – These are cases where residents are competing with commuters/local workers for limited road space. Comprehensive consultations / discussions with local Councillors/Residents and/or Businesses is required.
PRIORITY 3 – These are non-urgent cases where alternative on-street parking is available elsewhere within street, or there is an existing CPZ, or the issue(s) to be resolved is not considered to be in need of urgent attention.
Any request to introduce a CPZ will require statutory procedures to be followed. Once work is prioritised, the informal consultations are carried out to seek the views of residents. If the majority of respondents feel that there is a problem, a scheme is designed, further consultations are carried out with Ward Councillors and residents. Appropriate amendments are made according to the comments received.
Once a scheme is agreed by majority of residents, formal legal consultations are carried out in the form of advertising in the local newspapers and inviting comments/objections from any resident/stakeholder. This includes the Hertfordshire Constabulary, Freight Transport Association Ltd and Road Haulage Association.
After the legal process/consultations A Traffic Regulation Order (a legal document) will be made, sealed and signed. A scheme will be implemented with the necessary signage and road markings introduced soon after.
Consistent with current procedures at Hertsmere, the Traffic and Transport Portfolio Holder will work with officers to consider any objections. The Portfolio Holder will be requested to consider all representations received and to determine:
Whether to overrule them, in which case the proposals will be implemented in full, or;
Accept them, in which case the scheme will need to be amended. Further consultation is only required on the amendments, if they are more (rather than less) restrictive than the original scheme.
The most straightforward ‘priority 1’ request typically takes four to five months from initial consultation with residents and businesses through to any introduction of signage and road markings.
Priority 2 and 3 requests will invariably take longer and may not always secure a necessary consensus amongst the local community to enable a scheme to be introduced.