Council makes £10m in ‘profit’ from car parking Surplus revealed as budgets to help homeless set to be cut
THE surplus produced from council car parking operations in Birmingham has reached nearly £10 millions.
Birmingham City Council’s profit from parking charges has risen from £9.7 million last year to £9.8 million for the 2015-16 financial year.
The findings come after the Birmingham Post revealed £10 million is set to be taken out of Birmingham City Council’s homeless and domestic abuse budgets over two years.
The cuts, which serve as part of a wider package of proposed cutbacks, come after the council admitted it had to find £78 million to balance the books.
The 353 local authorities in England generated a combined ‘profit’ of £756 million from their on- and offstreet parking activities, RAC data shows.
The figures are calculated by taking income from parking charges and penalty notices, and then deducting running costs.
The biggest profits outside of London were reported by Brighton & Hove (£20.1 million), followed by Nottingham (£13.6 million) and Milton Keynes (£10.8 million).
Westminster had the largest surplus in England (£55.9 million) followed by Kensington & Chelsea (£34.2 million) and Camden (£25.2 million).
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “These numbers might seem eye-wateringly large, but in part they reflect the growing competition for space in many of our towns and cities.
“In 1995 there were only 21.4 mil- lion cars on Britain’s there are 30.7 million.
“Parking charges are one of the tools councils use to keep traffic moving whilst also allowing people reasonable and affordable access to high street shops and other facilities.
“The good news is that any profit generated by councils from on-street parking must by law be spent on transport-related activities.”
Local Government Association transport spokesman Judith Blake insisted that “councils do not make a profit from parking”.
“Income from on-street parking charges is spent on running parking services and surpluses are spent on essential transport projects, such as tackling the £12 billion roads repair backlog, creating new parking spaces and providing subsidised bus travel for children or elderly residents,” she said. roads, today