A salutary warning from south of the Border...
A WORKPLACE parking tax can work only if millions is spent on public transport, the Scottish Government has been warned.
The UK’s first parking levy scheme began in Nottingham in April 2012 and has raised around £61 million for the local authority.
Businesses within the city boundary are charged £415 per year per parking space if they offer 11 or more to workers.
Organisations have the option of passing the cost on to staff, with some offering subsidies and others paying the full amount.
Nottingham City Council leader David Mellen said: ‘There was opposition from some businesses and the local Chamber of Commerce early on and while we appreciate nobody would choose to increase their bills, it seems clear local employers can now see the merits of this scheme. Workers benefit from some of the best public transport in the country and lower congestion levels.’
But not all companies were on board – Games Warehouse, which provides games facilities to pubs across the UK, was forced to move to Derby to save folding.
The firm’s Sean Lynch said: ‘If we stayed in Nottingham we would have had to ask employees to pay the parking charges and would undoubtedly have lost staff.’
Since the workplace parking levy (WPL) has been in place, the money it has raised has been used to double the coverage of the tram network and increase the capacity of the network to 20 million passengers a year.
Nottingham Station has been transformed with lift and escalator access, and new shops and cafes. Upgrading of Linkbus services to electric buses, carrying more than six million passengers a year, has also been carried out.
Councillor Mellen said: ‘We know some businesses investing in Nottingham cite this as among the things that attract them to the city. But there’s no doubt that as national Government funding falls and the climate emergency looms ever larger, we all need to face some difficult decisions.
‘One of those is whether driving to work is now a privilege rather than a right and if companies and motorists need to share some responsibility by helping to fund alternative ways of commuting.’
A spokesman from the GMB union said it ‘has managed to ensure many workers are not impacted by this charge and continues to push for employers to pay the WPL, just the same as any other business rates’.