Hayling island and Havant council

[pamthevan]

Hi all

I am in conversation wuth Hayling island delelopmemt councilor, parking councilor etc.
Have been chatting about decision last year to not only ban overnighting but also charge sleep adapted vehicles a flat rate of £15 during the day eben for a 1/2 dog walk.
They say they are not oposed ti campervans overnighting and in my last email response welcomed motorhome users engaging with upcoming consiltations.
Rather than throw open to the masses I think a gentler more targeted thought out response may be better....
Anyone else local want to join me campaigning on this project?

[Steve]

Hi Pam, have you sent them our new briefing document and also the article printed in the British Parking Association magazine?

The BPA support our campaign and now have links to CAMpRA documents in their resource library.
https://portfolio.cpl.co.uk/Parking-News/417/22/

Briefing document.pdf

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[pamthevan]

Hi Steve, no not yet but I will....at the moment they are talking about the issues of spacing of 6m and inability to mark out area as its gravel. They are planning redevelopmemt of the area and welcome views but at same time putting up signs saying no overnight parking for sleep adapted vehicles and charging silly daytime fees too.....mixed messages and excuses i think but at least I have got them into conversation at long last

[Steve]

Send them our fire safety report and attached spacing suggestions for multiple use car park, the 6m is a recommendation for a campsite, there is no camping behaviour on an Aire.

Fire safety Report Motorhome spacing. date added 1.pdf

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CAMpRA Sites spacing in car parks.pdf

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[pamthevan]

Hi Steve, they have it seems had a fire risk assessment done and are aware that spacings of between 3 and 6 m depending on vehicle construction is needed...they say that as the surface is not marked out with bays and is of gravel construction so cannot be marked out. He believes motorhome users will not self space out. They say that as it is adjacent a sssi it cannot be tarmacked to allow suutable marking..
I have suggested posts are dug into surace...which is already a marking method used on site...to mark out motorhome bays for overnighting. The site uses Ringo so give the motorhome bays a diferent location number from rest of carpark to collect fees specific to motorhomes. I have even offered to volunteer my time to help dig out for the posts if funding is an issue for the council....
I have suggested that If the bays are spread widely along the carpark the fire spacing is easilly achieved and at the same time the motorhomes spread out to avoid complaints from locals of congregation of motorhomes.
Part of the site is a sssi so I have mentioned the environmental impact of not having local overnight aires and explained that the next official one is in Portland...70 miles away due to the roll out of no overnight signs on the south coast. To ballance the arguement of environmental impacts from un necessary travel to and from the area.

The campsites on the island charge the usual very high fees but are located miles from the seafront making daytime parking necessary...the fees for sleep adapted vehicles are £15 flat rste for even 1hour dog walk...identical vehicles not sleep adapted charge per hour like cars, I have said i feel this is discriminating based of just vehicle modifification status not suze, weight etc. I got a response saying that as some motorhomes erect awnings they pay more..I have explained that erection of awnings...tables...chairs are all camping acticities..and should be excluded from the carpark for all. It is.unreasonable to effectively fine all campervan and.motorhome users for unusual unreasonable abuse of space..especially since the site does not currently exclude that.kind of use on their signage.
I believe they have all the facts but lack the vision....there are plans to erect posh eco acommodation pods on the site along with more facilities...we need to get an aire or 2 around the island carparks as part of that vision i think

[Roy]

Hi Pam,

I have a season ticket for parking at Beachlands and live in Waterlooville, I'm happy to get involved in helping you.

I have tried in the past and got nowhere, but it sounds like you have got someone to engage, well done

[Steve]

Hi both great offer from Roy.

We have a volunteer group who will help but they need the willingness to get us involved.
Even a few rocks as markers would work.

If the think motorcaravan owners would not stick the the spacing then those same motorcaravan owners would park there anyway.

It would be great if we could get a copy of the fire risk assessment, it may be the same consultants who did ours ?
If so the 6m is for static caravans 5m if they have steel frames, 3m for motorcaravans.

You are correct that charging more for a vehicle based on conversion could be seen as discriminatory and a court in Italy I believe? Ruled that was the case.

But we need to just keep offering ideas and to assist them

[pamthevan]

Hi Roy...also live in waterlooville, happy to meet up one day, compare emails and see if we can try to engage with them more....not sure if they are engaging positively yet or making excuses hoping i will stop emailing....we can.but try.though...

[mjjordan]

There was at one time an attempt to create a Hayling Town Council, but it seems to have withered, perhaps you couple of more local people ( I am in Southampton) can see if there is any vestige of life in that project that may have some sympathy for us, or perhaps any councillors on Havant Borough who are specific to Hayling? i did email them years ago pointing out that even eating a sandwich in my works van during a lunch break was apparently contravening their long list of car park rules but got nil response. Hope you can find a sensible person somewhere to take our side, the previous arrangement for vans was, I thought, a very good one, and I don't see why they can't just revert to that, at least.

[pamthevan]

Following on from my recent emails...this is the last one i recieved from clr Tim Pike.....

Thank you for your comments Paul. I am in agreement that it would be good to bring back motorhome parking - but it has to be in a way that is safe, legal and cost-effective. It is unfortunately the case that people seem very keen to blame the Council when things happen on Council property, and then make claims.

The advice we have received from officers is that we cannot leave it to signage to control overnight parking - it needs to be monitored and physically controlled. There is therefore additional costs, and potentially changes in the business rates that Council has to pay.

My suggestion remains that responding to this issue should be part of delivering the overall seafront ambition, that Cllr Satchwell is leading, so that all users requests can be balanced against each other. Please continue to feedback as part of those discussions, and I would be confident that there are ways of accommodating overnight motorhomes in the future.

............
Progress being made..... I offered for reps frim Campra to maybe meet face to face but am awaiting replies....will leave a week then follow up......we could ask the entire campra group to provide support by emailing Clr Satchwell but feel maybe that might at this stage result in pressing it too much .....thoughts???