Head teacher closes school over parking issue

[fd3]

I don't see a solution to that^.  When I did teacher training [Local Geography]I was living in Kings Heath and had a placement in Cradley Heath[/Local Geography]; I tried the cycle ride once during half term but it was clearly not going to happen.  Placements are in whatever schools will offer placements and have teachers who will work with the students.
But it's not just students who can't afford to live near their school, take any affluent area which has a school, unlikely that teachers will be able to afford to live local, unless they are all the wives (it's rarely the husbands who choose a low income second earner) of higher earners.

[barakta]

Yep, some schemes are better than others, but it is hard to explain to $Student (in my case they'll be disabled) that they can't just have a placement at Schools A-D in their immediate area cos those schools are probably not in $OurUniversity's placement scheme. And our place works hard to make no placement further than 45 mins away and do try to identify students who genuinely cannot drive for a legit reason but I believe it's a constant juggle and students do complain a lot so they've had to adopt a "tough shit" attitude for most of them.

[fd3]

I did my PGCE at UoB, which I believe is your place (?). I can see that there is also the factor that $NearestSchool is possibly != $BestLearningOpportunity for the student.

[DuncanM]

Oxford is introducing a Workplace Parking Levy. Any business with more than 11 employees will have to pay £11 per month per space to the council. The prospect of this on top of the LTNs has caused a couple of the more distant commuting teachers to leave the school at which my wife works.
It sounds like the school will be ripping up the car parking spaces it has in front of the buildings to save the money. No idea what the hospitals are going to do...

[fd3]

I like putting more pressure on employers to reduce their employees' car commuting but
1. sounds like a window tax if it is the school's parking spaces that are being taxed (as opposed to their use of space off the property)
2. sounds like a great way to kill off struggling businesses
3. depending on the school - e.g. if it is a secondary school and the CS teacher commutes in from afar, it's a great way to remove key staff and remove the subject from the curriculum.

[Kim]

It seems to have worked pretty well in Nottingham...

[Jaded]

https://www.transportnottingham.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Workplace-Parking-Levy-10-Year-Impact-Report_compressed.pdf

[quixoticgeek]

I'm all for taxing parking spaces at companies. Giving the company incentive to make it easier for their employees to not drive is IMHO a good thing. The argument I hear tho often goes along the lines of:

"But my staff have to drive, cos there's no public transport, or cycle infra here."

And for large companies, with hundreds of employees my simple response i "why are you ok paying for a carpark for your staff, but not ok to pay for a bus for them?" Big employers should be able to subsidise buses that stop outside their business from the local council operated bus company...

Weaning humanity off cars is going to require public transport, and public transport needs funding, and it needs support. It doesn't need to be profitable tho.

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

I like putting more pressure on employers to reduce their employees' car commuting but
1. sounds like a window tax if it is the school's parking spaces that are being taxed (as opposed to their use of space off the property)
2. sounds like a great way to kill off struggling businesses
3. depending on the school - e.g. if it is a secondary school and the CS teacher commutes in from afar, it's a great way to remove key staff and remove the subject from the curriculum.

This illustrates the parking-reduction conundrum. Half the people in favour of reducing the amount of space dedicated to car parking say priority should be given to reducing car parking on roads, because <good reasons to do with traffic flow, public access, safety, multiple uses of streets, etc>. And half the people in favour of reducing the amount of space dedicated to car parking say priority should be given to reducing car parking off roads, because <good reasons to do with amenity, drainage, access to non-tarmac areas esp for children, etc>.

And neither approach will be successful unless we also implement other measures to reduce car use and ownership, which we're not facing up to.

[ian]

I'd argue it's neither good for the school nor the teachers for such long commutes to be necessary, and well, why shouldn't any business pay for parking?

Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.

[fd3]

So, if you build a car park you should pay the council £11 per month per space?
I still reckon if a school owns its property and chooses to use some of it for staff parking it’s not really a council taxable issue.

Though I would like the council to tax the parking of all cars for all residents, might cut down on the number of houses with 3+ cars.

For schools, we’ve already talked about some schools being in areas that are not affordable for teachers and teacher specialism; you can add to that schools that are in less pleasant neighbourhoods where teachers may choose not to live if given the option and some teachers don’t want to live where they work (much like the police force).

[HTFB]

Induced traffic demand from a new parking space just about anywhere in Oxford has, I would guess, a direct cost to the council of at least that much, and a very much higher total social cost.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.

So what should you do if you're a self-employed builder or similar?

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Off street parking of commercial vehicles is a requirement in many places, just not in the UK.

[ian]

In other places, leastways the one's I've lived in, commercial vehicles need to be licensed as such and on-street parking paid for. Increasingly, a lot of what I see isn't even self-employed, it's big companies, like Virgin. So, we're paying for them to store their vehicles.

As for schools, I don't think any good solution is subsidise schools in posh places by making teachers commute for an hour at their own cost.

[rogerzilla]

Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.

So what should you do if you're a self-employed builder or similar?

I thought most USians drove quasi-commercial vehicles anyway, like the F150.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I can see the logic for it as applied to firms like Virgin, but I'm wondering where, in practical terms, Bob McBuilder and Peter Plumberson park their vans in areas to which such rules apply?

[Cudzoziemiec]

As for schools, I don't think any good solution is subsidise schools in posh places by making teachers commute for an hour at their own cost.

Surely all state schools are "subsidised" anyway? Not that that makes long commutes a good thing.

[DuncanM]

Yes, if you have a car park on private land, no matter how long it has been there, you will have to pay the levy on the spaces.

In the specific case of a school, if you require your staff to be able to transport many kg of books, busses become much less appealing. Many bus routes pass the school, but you may not want to struggle with the books onto busses crowded with kids you teach every day, and they are frequently delayed (eg my daughter regularly waits half an hour for a bus after school). There is a significant issue with routes in that they tend to go to/from the city centre, but very few go from one area to another, but that's a whole 'nother discussion. Some of the local schools have great cycle infrastructure, some (like my wife/daughter's) is much more hit and miss (and the last mile from our direction has almost none).

In principle, I think it's a good idea, and I've not seen the other details that go along with it. I fear it will make recruitment for the schools and hospitals harder, and it will have almost no impact on traffic as much of that is driven by students, parents, and patients, and this won't affect them at all.

[nicknack]

The only time I've ever driven a 7.5ton truck I got back to London (from Glasgow) too late to return it to the hire place. So I parked it on the road, somewhere around Turnham Green. Apparently this was the wrong thing to do cos in the morning it was not there. The police had removed it to their pound in Fulham and I had to cough up some pounds to get it back.

[CrazyEnglishTriathlete]

Oxford has a green belt planning problem.  With a prestigious university and industry it has far more jobs than living accommodation, but instead of building on its outskirts - the building lives in surrounding overgrown villages and towns out to Thame, Abingdon, Kidlington etc, which is a hopeless model for providing public transport.

[DuncanM]

Massively off-topic.
There are plans afoot to build something like 10,000 new houses on the green belt in the coming years. They will invariably be absurdly priced though. Part of the planning problem is that the green belt doesn't sit inside Oxford City Council boundaries, so the various rural local authorities get to argue about it (and make joined up transport planning someone elses problem).

[TimC]

I'm all for taxing parking spaces at companies. Giving the company incentive to make it easier for their employees to not drive is IMHO a good thing. The argument I hear tho often goes along the lines of:

"But my staff have to drive, cos there's no public transport, or cycle infra here."

And for large companies, with hundreds of employees my simple response i "why are you ok paying for a carpark for your staff, but not ok to pay for a bus for them?" Big employers should be able to subsidise buses that stop outside their business from the local council operated bus company...

Weaning humanity off cars is going to require public transport, and public transport needs funding, and it needs support. It doesn't need to be profitable tho.

J

(My bold) What's one of those, then? There ain't none in Suffolk, as far as I can tell. There are (rapidly vanishing) council subsidies for the private bus companies, but there are no council-owned bus companies.

All of this needs a coordinated approach across a wide area - whether that's the devolved nations, county councils or whatever, and it needs to recognise the very different needs and solutions that apply in rural areas from those that apply in towns and cities. If a council is going to make it difficult for a company/school/hospital to retain on-site parking, it must develop alternatives that work for those who need to get to those places. It's not good enough to say 'sorry, climate' and make it impossible for those organisations to function. That's dictatorship, and will get the appropriate response from the communities affected.

[DuncanM]

Yes.  Meanwhile, Stagecoach have removed their return tickets, so you have to buy a travelpass or two singles. I guess they can claim that they haven't raised their prices, but the reality for people who use the bus is different. (Also means that the 2 bus companies that share routes won't accept each other's tickets).

[ian]

Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.

So what should you do if you're a self-employed builder or similar?

I thought most USians drove quasi-commercial vehicles anyway, like the F150.

Commercial. That's a recreational run-around.

In many states (I can't vouch for all of them), any commercial vehicle typically needs to be registered as such (and you'll have commercial plates). Restrictions generally apply to operation and parking thereof.