By Cllr Pauline Jorgensen
Thanks to technical difficulties, residents have been given a week’s reprieve from the Liberal Democrat/Labour parking charges increase, which is now coming into effect next week.
Despite the best efforts of Wokingham’s Conservative councillors, and a petition signed by over 4,200 residents, the Liberal Democrat-led administration is pushing ahead with doubling parking charges for our town centre car parks. These charges will hit the lowest paid workers, like baristas, waiting staff and apprentice hairdressers.
The Conservative Group has been clear we would not have increased charges this year and we would not increase charges by more than inflation in the future.
Back in October Cllr Fishwick, Executive Member for Active Travel, Transport and Highways, gave various reasons for his decision to impose the increases. These included a significant shortfall in parking income in part due to car park usage remaining below pre-pandemic levels, the risk to frontline services if extra money wasn’t raised. He also said that the Council wanted to discourage residents from making “inappropriate journeys”.
It is not credible that any Council would cut statutory frontline services such as Children’s and Adult’s services to pay for car parks. Much of these budgets are ring fenced to be spent on the most vulnerable. Likewise, revenue from council car parks can only be spent within the Highways and Transport areas, as set out in the Road Traffic Regulation Act, it can’t be used for other purposes.
Car park usage has not only caught up with pre-pandemic levels, but is at an all-time high based on the Council’s own figures of town centre car park ticket sales. Over 200,000 town centre car park tickets were sold in 2022/23, more than in the year 2017/18. This is great news for our high streets and local businesses, but it will be interesting to see if this growth continues once the increase in charges bites.
The Liberal Democrats’ Budget sets out a real-terms cut in road improvements. Will any extra income from the cost of parking lead to noticeably better road surfaces and fewer potholes, will car park usage and Town Centre businesses slump as people go elsewhere where parking is cheaper?
We put forward a plan to reduce the Council’s back office running costs by £2.1 million which would have meant that we could have frozen car park charges this year and added £1m to the budget for road maintenance. This was rejected out of hand by the Liberal Democrats.
The significant increase in parking charges is coming at a time when people across our Borough are feeling their household budgets squeezed by inflation. At the Overview and Scrutiny Meeting last October and when we presented the petition against the parking charges increase, I was pleased to be able to bring the voice of residents, workers, and local businesses to the Council. We heard the concerns of small businesses that are still recovering from the effects of the pandemic and we also heard from employers. In some cases, young or apprentice workers will lose nearly two hours of pay just to feed the parking meter.
Against this backdrop we believe it is perverse of the Liberal Democrat administration to deliberately seek to make parking your car unaffordable to discourage what they deem “inappropriate journeys”. Conservative councillors fully support active travel and its benefits for health and wellbeing, as well as the environment. However, it is the less well off that will be forced to make difficult decisions. Where they have no choice but to use their car, it is lower paid workers whose budgets the Council will be squeezing.
Conservative councillors want to see busy and thriving high streets across the Borough. We fear that the Liberal Democrat and Labour charges may put a stop to that.
ENDS
