Firms face tax on car park spaces

£9m council levy could cripple us, warn companies

COMPANIES face having to pay an additional tax if they provide parking for staff and customers, under new plans to reduce emissions.

Proposals for a £9million car parking levy have been unveiled by City of Edinburgh Council.

Councillors believe it could help cut congestion and air pollution but businesses have hit out at the plan, arguing it would cripple struggling firms.

The council’s SNP-Labour administration will ‘set out the argument and rationale’ for the charge.

It could see businesses, including retailers outwith the city centre, charged for providing parking spaces for employees, visitors and customers.

If the scheme is implemented, Edinburgh would be the first place in Scotland to have such a levy – following the lead of Nottingham, which brought in charges of £402 per space in 2010.

David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, yesterday said he was ‘sceptical’ about the plan, which comes as the Scottish Daily Mail continues to campaign for the SNP Government to help boost the country’s high streets.

Mr Lonsdale claims the levy would further harm firms who are already struggling with business rates – which are also paid on parking spaces in the workplace.

He said: ‘We would be sceptical about the introduction of costly new workplace parking levies, especially if it opened the door to the levy being applied to parking spaces provided for customers of retailers, in retail parks and shopping malls. Restrictive and costly parking is already seen as a deterrent to shopper footfall.’

Mr Lonsdale continued: ‘A levy like this could well be seen as yet another tax on firms which they can ill afford.’

Although Edinburgh council has pledged to look at how the city could adopt a workplace parking levy, Conservative councillors do not support the move.

Tory Nick Cook said: ‘We are almost setting an assumption that the council is in favour of introducing a workplace parking levy.’

The plan is just one of a number of ways being considered to limit traffic in the capital – with councillors also looking to bring in ‘traffic-free’ Sundays banning motorists from key roads.

The move would require support from the Scottish Government, with ministers having to amend the Transport Bill in order to facilitate the change.

But yesterday, Transport Scot- land said there were no plans at present to allow this.

Edinburgh’s transport and environment convener Lesley Macinnes said plans were at a ‘very early stage’. She added that introducing a workplace parking levy would bring many benefits such as cutting car journeys into the city and in turn ‘lowering congestion, improving air quality and encouraging active travel’.

She said the move would be part of a plan to ‘transform’ Edinburgh with the introduction of a Low Emission Zone, which will see drivers having to comply with strict emissions standards or face a ban from the city centre. A Transport Scotland spokesman said: ‘The Scottish Government has not consulted on workplace parking levies, nor proposed this measure through the Transport Bill.’

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