Parking enforcement

As a resource intended to be of interest to both old and new residents and as a reference for the future, we have provided a history section to be expanded with more material as the website develops. A rough chronological framework is used here to structure the information we have to date on Ruston Mews.

One of the priorities was to control parking in Ruston Mews. At the time (c1992), parking was controlled by the council south of the Westway bridge with unrestricted parking to the north. The area of the mews at the entrance was regularly used by the local garages to dump cars awaiting repair and cars were often parked by people unconnected with the mews and sometimes left for several days to the annoyance of residents.

Some residents had resorted to installing lockable parking bollards outside their houses and people sometimes came to blows as disagreements on parking rights continued to simmer.

RMA first introduced a clamping scheme in 1992 with the then Metropolitan Parking Ltd. The first scheme gave residents a Residents Permit and Visitors Permit. This, understandably, turned out to be a mistake because people then started to park second cars in the mews and would often let their visitors park outside other houses in the mews resulting in many disagreements.

The extra visitors permit for the whole mews was dropped eventually in 1995 and a scheme introduced to allow visitors to park on a Day Ticket system in the area outside the gate. The Day Tickets however were not a robust solution and because of the need to reprint a new batch each year at several hundred pounds a go, the association actually lost money on this scheme and a new system was required.

The latest system of single use only Day Tickets was introduced in 2003 and has comfortably covered its costs. It has also allowed RMA to exercise more control over the Visitors’ parking area outside the gate thereby ensuring that spaces are available for genuine visitors and for overflow parking of residents cars as required.