Council 'Insult' to Hampton over Parking

5.10.46pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 20th Oct 2003

Liberal Democrat Prospective GLA Candidate, Dee Doocey attacks the Tories over their attitude to Hampton Residents

MP Vincent Cable has written a furious letter to the council on behalf of Hampton residents after it had backed down on an earlier commitment to install an improved parking scheme in the Bloxham Crescent area and told residents that they should pay for it themselves.

Vincent Cable said that the council had been "inconsistent and insulting" in its attitude to residents.

• two years ago the council carried out a survey and well over 90% of residents supported the council scheme for parking bays which would improve the environment and reduce the wear and tear on a patch of grass along the middle of the road.

• a year ago the council confirmed to Vincent Cable that it wanted to go ahead and was seeking funding from Transport for London.

• the council has now written to Vincent Cable to say that it hadn't applied to TfL, that TfL wouldn't be interested anyway and that perhaps residents should fund the work themselves.

Vincent Cable said: "this is unbelievable. The council is getting an appalling reputation in Hampton for making promises and then abandoning them. It has already done this with the traffic calming on Thames Street. But to suggest that the residents in a social housing development should now pay for the work themselves - when residents in well-heeled parts of the borough are getting all kinds of fancy schemes - is insulting and insensitive".

Dee Doocey, the Lib Dem GLA spokesperson for SW London, who also lives in Hampton, said that she will raise the matter with Transport for London: "I suspect the council is simply making excuses for its own incompetence. If it thought TfL would not finance this project it should never have promised the residents that the work would be done. As a long standing resident of Hampton I know that there are strong feelings about the way the Conservative council deals with Hampton, treating it as very low priority".