Hundreds of residents have called on Southwark Council to revisit parking restrictions around the shops in Dulwich Village to help support local businesses and encourage more visitors to the area.
During a meeting of Southwark’s Cabinet on early this month local residents, Clive Rates and Tristan Honeybourne who are standing as Conservative candidates in the upcoming local elections challenged the council’s response to their petition, which had been backed by more than 600 people.
The petition said Dulwich Village businesses had seen “sharp declines” in footfall and shops are having to review hours and reduce staffing as a result of recent traffic and parking schemes in the area.
In its written response, the council referred to data from traffic cameras, which concluded there had been an increase in the number of pedestrians along Dulwich Road since traffic schemes had been implemented.
However Mr Rates and Mr Honeybourne argued the data “doesn’t tell the whole story” and doesn’t show whether people are actually browsing or spending money in shops, or if they are just passing through during peak times.
Mr Honeybourne told Cabinet members: “Dulwich Village is not a shopping mall, it’s a community with independent shops, cafés and local services – all being important parts of what makes it special.
“Once they go, the character goes with them. It’s too easy to blame Amazon or national trends – you can’t get a haircut on Amazon and we have two places for that in the Village.”
Mr Rates and Mr Honeybourne said they were making three “specific” requests to the council, including removing some double yellow lines which were introduced around nearby streets last year.
Mr Rates said: “By all means keep the lines that address a genuine safety issue, but remove or amend those that don’t and ensure there is enough short stay and loading space so quick visits and deliveries can work properly.”
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He also called on traffic monitoring cameras in Dulwich Village to be restricted to just school term-time rather than all year round, and said introducing permits for residents so they could drive through camera zones would help remove “the fear and friction that keeps even local residents away from the village shops”.
In response, Cllr John Batteson, Cabinet Member for Climate Emergency, Jobs and Transport, said the implementation of one hour of free parking along the North Parade was introduced to increase turnover and encourage more shoppers to the area, as businesses had previously complained that commuters were parking in these spaces all day.
He said: “Over the last five or six years there have been external factors outside of the parking that you’ve touched on which has meant that businesses right across the borough are seeing less custom and less trade.
“The petition speaks about references to Amazon, we know it’s not just Amazon that is meaning that high streets are facing more more challenging times, but we do know that the increase of online shopping has been a major issue for the high street to deal with not just in Dulwich or in Southwark.”
On traffic monitoring cameras, Cllr Batteson said: “There are a variety of different schools in this area, some of them are private and they have different term times which would potentially make additional challenges to having term-time only enforcement compared to other schemes of this type.
“But I think there is a definite commitment to continue working with the businesses, with the [Dulwich Village] Traders Association and with the Dulwich Estate.”
it reiterates the fact that high streets can survive a lot, except the removal of parking and access. Locals are not enough to keep the shops open , you need a wider radius. all over the country high streets die when parking or vehicle access is reduced or eliminated.