Following intervention from the Hampton Wick Association (HWA) regarding a local parking consultation, Richmond Council has admitted public representations were not included in its report.

According to the HWA, the council has said it will withdraw its decision to press ahead with significant changes to Hampton Wick's local CPZ parking zone following a consultation, which took place earlier in the year, and "fully consider all feedback from residents in a new report".

The HWA had protested that the consultation was not fit for purpose, stating that it was "being unclear and in parts misleading".

The Association said: "The council officials did not agree and carried on with the consultation."

On 29 July, Richmond Council published its decision to go ahead with all its proposed changes, which according to the HWA, "leads to significant loss of overnight / off-peak parking in Hampton Wick".

The HWA added: "They had made no amendments at all to their original proposals, and they stated that they had received only seven responses to the consultation.

"We were very surprised at the apparent low response rate and we asked local people if they recognised their submissions in the seven cited.

"We very quickly heard from 13 residents whose responses were "missing" from the council's report. Something was clearly very wrong."

The HWA intervenes

The HWA wrote to the council to say that in light of these "missing responses" the report and the decision based on it should both be withdrawn.

It gave the authority a deadline of 5pm on 14 August to respond, failing which The HWA said it would issue a Pre-Action Protocol letter preceding an application to the High Court for a judicial review.

The HWA said: "This was not an idle threat, nor one that we made lightly. We prepared the Pre-Action Protocol letter, with supporting evidence, so that we would be ready to take action.

"At 4.27pm on 14 August the council responded to our letter!"

Council admits error

In response to the HWA's letter, Richmond Council said: "Following an investigation, we identified that responses submitted through the new online consultation form were not included in the published report."

The authority has committed that "all responses received to this consultation, including those not included in the original report, will be reviewed and an updated report published, which will include consideration of all feedback received."

Value of local knowledge

Speaking about the council's response, the HWA said: "We hope that the council will realise the value of the informed local feedback provided by residents, which can differentiate between areas where, for instance, double-yellow lines may indeed be needed for safety reasons versus areas where no problems are caused by having single-yellow lines which provide valuable overnight and off-peak parking for residents and businesses.

"We trust that this will result in a more carefully thought-through set of proposals rather than the blanket, one-size-fits-all approach of the current plan."

It added: "We have written back to the council listing all the consultation responses that we know about, which we hope will be helpful to them as they track down all of the rest of them.

"There must be many more residents whose responses were missed beyond those whom we managed to reach directly.

"We do not know whether any other consultations may have been affected by the council's faulty online form.

"The council says the new CPZ report will be published within 7-10 days."

Nub News has contacted Richmond Council for comment.