PARKING REVENUE HAS NEVER BEEN MORE VITAL FOR COUNCILS

‘ The value to the council of revenue from parking is laid bare in its response to calls for two hours free in Longton

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PARKING is always a contentious issue. Finding a space and then having to pay for it. And often how much it costs to do that drives motorists to distraction. It sparks debates between those who run car parks and those who use them. Should parking be free and if so would that be a way of bringing more people into a particular area? It’s very rare to find anywhere, these days, where parking is free of charge. And the story on page two of today’s newspaper explains just why.

The value and importance to Stoke-on-trent City Council is laid bare in their response to a 500name petition calling on councillors to provide two hours free parking in Longton on market days. The petitioners claim Longton is becoming ‘increasingly desolate’ due to shoppers using the free Tesco car park and ‘not venturing further into the town’. But the council produced data to show that the main Longton Exchange car park was well used by around 118,000 motorists a year, paying £1.60 to park for two hours. So the cost of providing two hours of free parking in Longton would be £100,000 to the authority. As the city council increasingly has to find ways of coming up with its own cash, it’s clear how valuable income from car parks is. And those figures relate to just one car park. The danger is that as fund ing from Central Government continues to decrease, then increasing the cost of parking could be seen as one way of offsetting that. That, we would venture, would benefit neither the authority or the communities served by those car parks.