People power won the day as campaigners forced Kingston Council to back down from its plans to hike parking permit charges by up to four times, based on car emissions.

The controversial proposals were announced in February as the council prepared to adopt its 2019/20 budget, and were expected to bring in £525,000 a year, but the authority always insisted it was about improving air quality, not making money.

Permits for electric and hybrid cars in controlled parking zones (CPZs) would have become free, and the price for other vehicles would have gone up in line with the car’s emissions of CO2.

This would have meant some people who currently pay £80 would have been paying £350, with extra charges for diesel cars or the second or third car per household.

Residents in CPZs, who account for about one in 10 of the borough’s cars, were angry at being targeted.

They set up public meetings and ran petitions, one of which was signed more than 2,000 times.

And they brought a community motion to a full council meeting on April 24, proposing that the differential charges be scrapped altogether.

The week before the meeting, Kingston’s ruling Liberal Democrats announced they were reducing the planned charges – but this was not enough for the campaigners.

They packed the meeting, and a select few addressed councillors.

Many said they use their cars very rarely, for grocery shopping, visiting family and going on holiday, each making the point that vehicles do not pollute when they are parked.

North Kingston resident Georgina Hall said her car was vital in supporting her grandmother and her mother-in-law when they were older: “one car serving three generations of a family”.

Her husband is currently on an experimental treatment course for bone cancer, which means he often has to travel to Belgium.

Unreliable trains mean Ms Hall is often called at 5am to give him a lift from the station into town, so he does not miss his Eurostar connection.

And his early retirement means the family would find it difficult to buy an electric car.

District nurse Suzanne Harrison, also of North Kingston, needs her car to do her job.

She lives in a house of five adults, including her three children all in their twenties and who all need cars for work, although sometimes only infrequently.

None of them is on a big salary, and the initial proposals would have made the cost to the family sky-rocket.

Other residents questioned the legality of the scheme, and many said it would not in fact reduce pollution – as well as claiming it would be impossible to measure its success.

After listening to the speakers, and after a hasty Lib Dem group Whatsapp discussion as the meeting went on, the leader of the council announced they were putting a pin in the plans.

Councillor Liz Green said she was confident that with so many people now engaged on the issue of air quality, a planned citizens assembly on the issue would be a future success.

She said she had not planned to, but supported the community motion (with the sections criticising her Lib Dem party taken out).

New Malden based campaigner James Giles, who proposed the motion, said after the meeting: “The council has done many u-turns but for once this is one I actually welcome.

“And I think residents will welcome it too. People were incredibly willing to get involved with the campaign.

“It shows when residents are united and they do come together in strength, anything is possible.”