RISING rents, expensive rates and soaring utility costs. It’s tough being a small business these days, and now there’s another thing to worry about – exorbitant town centre parking charges.
According to the Institute of Advanced Motorists, council parking profits rose by a chunky 15 per cent in the 2011/12 financial year to reach £411 million.
Over three years, the total rise comes to whopping 27 per cent.
The IAM’s main beef is that the increases coincide with a big cut in local authority spending on road safety programmes. But business groups were quick to join in the criticism too, with the Forum of Private Businesses saying the figures were “damning proof” that councils are hammering motorists visiting town centres.
According to Forum spokesman, Robert Downes “The evidence is now there for all to see that many councils are using motorists as cash cows without a thought for the consequences their actions have on the wider business communities. With an average increase of 15 per cent in take from fines and car parking charges, it’s plain councils are ramping up efforts and prices to raise revenue. Crude and short-sighted money spinners like this just means more and more shoppers abandoning their local high street and looking elsewhere for their shopping needs. The end result will be ghost high streets with boarded up shops.”
The Forum, which speaks mainly for small businesses, has instead been campaigning for parking charges to be dropped, at least on a selective basis, in order to help hard-hit town centres increase foot fall.
According to Downes, “The high street is sick, and while not a cure-all, free parking for shoppers would be a practical dose of medicine to helping ailing retailers make it to 2014.” Downes points in particular to a scheme run by Pendle Council in Lancashire, which gives drivers two and half hours free parking before charges kick in.
According to the IAM, the biggest earners from parking charges are the fashionable London boroughs of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Camden, with Westminster alone raking in £38 million. Kensington and Chelsea creamed off £27.5 million in 2011/12, a huge increase of 31 per cent over the previous year.
Outside London, drivers are being especially hard hit in Brighton and Hove (£13.7 million), Milton Keynes (£6.5 million) and Newcastle (£6.2 million). In the case of Newcastle, that represents a whopping rise of over 50 per cent.
