Parking problems threaten Crouch End shop

A CROUCH END entrepreneur has warned that she may have to close her successful interior design business unless Haringey Council provides parking for delivery vans. Sally Bourne, who owns Sally Bourne Interiors in Muswell Hill and Crouch End, first wrote t

A CROUCH END entrepreneur has warned that she may have to close her successful interior design business unless Haringey Council provides parking for delivery vans.

Sally Bourne, who owns Sally Bourne Interiors in Muswell Hill and Crouch End, first wrote to the council in June 2006, notifying it that stringent parking measures were crippling her business.

She explained that delivery drivers were being stung by £50 parking fines as they dropped off antiques, paints and furniture at her shop in Middle Lane, Crouch End.

But after two-and-half years of letter writing, phone calls and pleas to the council, Ms Bourne has this week conceded that she may have to close her Crouch End shop because the drivers have refused to deliver stock.

"It's an absolute farce," said Ms Bourne. "I pay my business rates and I employ 18 local people. But I cannot afford to keep paying for parking tickets and fines every time I need something dropped off at my shop.

"It has got so bad - with parking attendants swooping on my delivery drivers as soon as they pull up - that they have now refused to deliver goods to my Crouch End shop."

Ms Bourne, 43, said that she even received a parking ticket in Muswell Hill last month while she was unloading paints from her car, even though she had her hazard lights on and the boot open.

She added: "I now have to carry up to 20 tins of paint to my shop three times a week because the delivery vans won't deliver and even then I've been fined. It's unbelievable. Why is the council being so obstructive?"

A talented designer, Ms Bourne trained in ceramics at the prestigious Central St Martins College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art. She began her career as a potter, making hand-made ceramic tiles in her studio in Ferme Park Road, Crouch End, and supplying them to Liberty's, John Lewis, Selfridges and Heal's.

Then five years ago, she decided to diversify and open the interior design shop in Middle Lane which offers a full consultancy service on what fabrics, tiles and which colours to choose as well as quality furniture and home accessories. She opened the shop in Muswell Hill Broadway last year.

Ms Bourne said: "Ironically, we do well in financially straitened times because people often choose to convert their loft or redecorate a room, rather than move house.

"The problem is that it is not financially viable for me to be spending £24 a week minimum on parking tickets and £50 on fines while I drop paint and fabrics off at my shop."

Ideally Ms Bourne, who is married with two children, would like the council to build a parking bay in Middle Lane - and has repeatedly asked it to do so.

In August, the council said it was planning to start the application to install a loading bay but she has heard nothing since.

Cllr Brian Haley, cabinet member for environment and conservation, told the Broadway: "We have already opened consultations about introducing a loading bay in this parade and if there are no objections we would hope to have this in place before Christmas.