Agenda item

Assembly received and noted the terms of a petition presented by Mr Terence Harding, the lead petitioner.

Mr Harding thanked Assembly for their time and made the following points on behalf of parents of children at Ripple Primary School:

Ø  The intake of children is increasing and more staff would have to be employed.

Ø  The school staff are being penalised by having to pay to park.

Ø  There is sufficient parking space in Surrey Road and parking wardens have personally agreed with Mr Harding.

Ø  There are concerns regarding cars that park under Ripple flyover.  Children and parents have to walk in the road because cars are parked on the pavement.

Ø  More than 400 people walk back and forth, morning and afternoon.

The Chair invited Mr Roger Mitchell, Head Teacher of Ripple Primary School, to speak.

Mr Mitchell made the following points:

v  He became Head of Ripple Junior in 2005 and became Head of Ripple Primary when the Junior and Infants schools merged.

v  For the first 2/3 years that had been no difficulties with parking.

v  The CPZ in the area prevents people from parking and walking to the station.

v  At the time of day that staff park their cars, the streets are empty.

v  Many staff travel a long way and cannot do that without their cars.

v  The school will be expanding over the course of the next two years.

v  There are only 38 parking spaces across the school's two sites.

v  In support of the Green Policy, the school has provided bicycles to enable staff to travel between the two sites.

v  The school is recognised by Ofsted as "good" with qualities of "outstanding" and to sustain this, he needs to be able to employ the highest calibre of staff.

v  He is concerned that parking restrictions will be a barrier against employing the best staff, which he sees as a tragedy for a school that is doing so well.

Assembly received the response to the petition presented by the Divisional Director of Environmental Services (DDES) who stated that the CPZ in the area was working well and had been supported by 59% of the residents.

Members were pleased to note the progress that had been made by Ripple School.

In response to Members' questions, the DDES stated that permits were issued to doctors and voluntary workers to park in the borough but that permits were not provided to them to park at their place of work. 

In response, the Cabinet Member for Crime, Justice and Communities, Councillor Alexander, stated that:

·  She is on the Governing Board of Ripple Primary School and is also an Eastbury Ward Member.

·  She did not think that the residents who are having to pay for their permits would be happy if a parking permit was provided to the teachers.

·  If a permit were to be provided to the teachers at Ripple, a similar one would have to be provided to all the schools.

·  Council staff have to pay to park.

·  There are many bus routes from Barking Station.

·  Ripple Primary is a good school with a good Head Teacher and Governing Body – it will always attract good staff.

Assembly agreed for the reasons set out in the report that it was unable to support the petition.