Large receipts from car parks
Royal Borough: Charges will amount to £10m in 2022/23
The Royal Borough is estimating to bring in nearly £10million worth of income from parking charges in next year’s budget, a council meeting heard last week.
Drivers are being braced for a 4.8 per cent average increase in fees for car parking in the borough, with finance chiefs putting this rise down to inflation.
A corporate overview and scrutiny panel discussed the upcoming fees and charges for 2022/23 on Wednesday, which also predicts the council will bring in more than £1million from the planning and development sector.
Elsewhere, marriage and civil partnership ceremonies are hoped to generate £435,000, while temporary traffic regulation orders should bank £235,000, according to the local authority’s projections.
With regards to parking, council officers stated that there are ‘a number of considerations that come into play’ when it comes to setting increases in charges, such as the car park’s usage.
Alysse Strachan, head of neighbourhood services, said that the implications of existing resident discount
parking schemes (RDPS) were also taken into account.
She added that the 4.8 per cent increase represented the council’s ‘overall budget position’, rather than ‘individual tariffs’.
The Royal Borough’s cabinet agreed to roll out a new RDPS as part of its upcoming budget, covering Grove Road and West Street car parks in Maidenhead.
Pinkneys Green councillor Simon Werner (Lib Dem) asked what the rationale was behind the Nicholsons car park not being included in the offer.
Cllr Werner told the meeting that the Nicholsons is the ‘shoppers car park in Maidenhead’ and that the council should be ‘encouraging shoppers’ to visit the town.
“The charges since the
Advantage Card was got rid of [have] massively increased,” he said.
Ms Strachan said that there is ‘lots of data and feeding into models’ involved in making those decisions, adding: “It is the most used by shoppers but it is the balance of use and incorporating all those different elements into it.”
Cllr Lynne Jones (OWRA, Old Windsor) also claimed that Windsor is ‘far higher than most’ in terms of car parking charges, and wanted Victoria Street car park to be included in the resident discount offer.
In response, Ms Strachan and director of executive resources Adele Taylor confirmed that it would cost the council an additional £100,000 to include Victoria Street as part of the RDPS.
But they did say that it would be considered in a further review which is set to be carried out on the progress of the scheme.
Earlier in the meeting,
Cllr Jones said that she was pleased to see that resident parking permits had not increased in next year’s budget.
“I am pleased that we are not seeing those go up,” she said. “I’m sure they [residents] will be very happy about that.”