Residents at the north end of Oak Road and Oakfield Avenue were recently asked their preference on two different parking restriction schemes.

Over 80% asked for option 2, which was to have two-hour parking (with no return within two hours) along that northern section of Oak Road, plus junction protection around Oakfield Avenue to stop people blocking the junction.

That will now be implemented.

But there are a couple of other things to say on this.

First, stopping all-day parking there won’t suddenly make all those parkers vanish.  What I’d expect to happen is that most will find other places to park but, spread out a bit more, will cause less inconvenience to residents. (Some may decide to come in by bus or get a parking permit for the car park).

Second, there’s an issue with Oakfield Avenue which currently has no parking restrictions but is just too narrow to have cars parking all the way down it.  We’re looking again to get the right balance between residents parking and single or double yellow lines on Oakfield Avenue to ensure that residents and their visitors can park but the street isn’t blocked to ambulances, dustcarts and similar.