The Palmerston Residents Association feels that parking issues in the Sydenham area are becoming very grave, planners are encouraging more cars into to the area in their decisions to grant planning permission on more and more apartments in the Sydenham area our MLAs cannot say its not down to them, who passes the plans at council level? are our councillors not MLAs also.
The Residents Association has for a long time called on our planning services to take into account traffic in the Sydenham area when they are reaching decisions on any new developments, we think its a bit short sighted of our MLAs to think that residents in the Sydenham area would not think of buying cars, to shift the problem on to the police is absurd to say the least, it is up to the councillors to work with the community and listen to them when they say there are to many apartments in the Sydenham area.
We have pleaded with them to think of the community in regard to our disabled, young mothers and the elderly, but they fail to do something about it, it is not much good just playing lip service on these issues, the community wants action. Not passing the problem on to someone else to sort out,we would ask them to think about our bus service if the bus cannot get up our main roads how will our young mothers, elderly and disabled get to where ever they need to go, parking is a time bomb waiting to explode in the Sydenham area.
In the march to build apartments and railroad through planning decisions facts of life are being ignored, everyone needs to get somewhere no matter who they are, everybody needs to to shop and everybody wants a decent way of life. When the planning department and our councillors cannot see that we have a problem,we have seen local shops demolished to make way for apartments without any vision as to where people will shop it is up to our councillors not to grant planning decisions if they are causing more parking problems,removing shopping facilities,and not meeting the requirements of our young mothers, elderly and disabled.
Living Streets is Putting People First We encourage more people to walk,and to ensure our streets and towns are designed to allow people to do this. Professionals are encouraging people to walk and become healthier walking issues are firmly on the front foot and we should be able to do that without trying to negotiate around parked cars. We want to lobby our MLAs and our councillors for change to bring about a better way of life for us all without passing our concerns on to someone else to deal with it.
Living Streets is a Major UK Charity working in the UK to bring better streets for all we are working to bring better streets to Sydenham and to encourage more of our children to walk to school, in turn making them healthier, it also encourages pupils to walk and talk on their way to school and surely making people healthier is what we all want to do but we cannot achieve that if we do not look at parking issues and start to tackle them for the good of the residents and the community as a whole.
