Apologies for the long delay in posting, I’ve been very busy.

I visited the Harefield dump this week for the first time (it’s our local) and taking my wife’s card with me (warning: this is against the terms & conditions of use! – but I don’t have a card yet so ?).

It wasn’t long ago that I last visited the site and it’s quite a bit different. Normally you would just drive in when there is a space, dump your stuff and leave. They now have two lanes, one for HillingdonFirst card holders and one for those who are not. As you can see from the pic, every single car in the queue was a card holder and actually I’ve never seen it so busy. Whilst I was waiting, I noticed two separate Land Rover type cars go in via the waybridge (too tall for the barriers). One stopped and spoke with the woman at the desk but no card was shown and they just went straight in.

Entering Harefield.

The whole thing felt somewhat pathetic, there is a barrier which is linked to the machines which amusingly still have the [P] car parking sign on the side. You use the machine just like you would when parking and even get a ticket to put on the dashboard, it is literally the same thing but with a barrier attached. The signs were attached with cable ties and poorly made, so I imagine they will need replacing in a few months time. It really felt that the whole thing had been poorly designed and almost as a last minute thing.

Interestingly, both lanes accept the card (the attendants were asking people to move across),  so why the council felt it necessary to have a separate lane for HillingdonFirst residents is strange – were they really expecting that many out of borough users to pay a £10 fee? I have a feeling that will have to change, just put a sign up and let people use either lane, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Attendants

When you finally got to the machine, there was a guy standing there taking the card from us and pressing the yellow button and swiping on our behalf – the machine is not well placed which doesn’t help (its a parking meter, so designed for standing users – and its raised), but he said that the machines were causing people difficulties and hence the queue.

Once we had the ‘ticket’ the guy said “here’s you parking ticket.. yeah I know, you couldn’t make it up”, which seems to be the general consensus on the scheme.

It did occur to me whilst sitting in the queue, that if less people are using the dump I can assume that staff levels will be cut, or will they be reassigned to help confused residents at the barriers?