Pay for extra parking permits?
NOTTINGHAM residents face having to pay for second and third parking permits as the city council seeks the “leastworst ways” to balance its budget.
The authority is keeping first permits (either a residential or visitor permit) free of charge, but wants households in some areas to pay £35 for a second permit and £50 for a third.
The council is looking to balance its budget under the watch of a Governmentappointed improvement board.
Councillor Neghat Khan, portfolio holder for neighbourhoods, safety and inclusion, says there are roughly 800 Nottingham streets with permit schemes with more than 45,000 permits currently in circulation.
A consultation launched in July, lasting until September led to councillors approving the plans in principle at an executive board meeting on Tuesday.
Permit schemes cost the council over £500,000 every year and under the proposals the Labour-run authority would generate more than £400,000 to meet costs.
But residents are “not happy” and opposition councillors condemned the plans.
Councillor Kevin Clarke, Independent councillor for Clifton East, said: “I would just like for us, really, to appreciate why these problems have occurred within parking.
“The way I see it, and the way many residents see it, is the council mis-sold a lot of the responsibility for it, the parking levy, the amount of students we have now in my ward particularly and the tram.
“They have all added to these parking problems and now we are expected to let the residents incur these extra charges.”
Councillor Andrew Rule, leader of the council’s Conservative
group, agreed and said one of the “historical justifications” for the council having the second-highest council tax in the country for band D properties was because permits and bulky waste collections were free.
“At the time of the next election I will have been a councillor for eight years and I cannot overstate how significant parking charges have been to the residents of the east over that time, and how much they are due to external factors and not of residents’ causing.
“I understand part of the revenue initially from the workplace parking levy when it was first introduced was earmarked for funding schemes to combat displacement. Sadly Clifton never received any of this and it was left to ward councillors to resolve.”
Councillor Adele Williams, deputy leader of the council and portfolio holder for finance, argued that 80 percent of homes in Nottingham were on the lowest bands (A and B). The average bill, she said, was “the fourth-lowest in the country” as a result.
Council leader Councillor
David Mellen said: “Well, clearly people don’t want to pay more money than they need to but our regime compared to nearly every other authority in the country has been very generous to residents.
“As Councillor Khan has said, we retain a free permit for most people, most people in our city have either not got a car or only one and obviously there will be, as Neghat says, some administrative costs already that we are subsidising these permits for.
“As for the tram, the tram has been contributed for by the Workplace Parking Levy and your community in Clifton have benefited from the tram more than many communities.”
Councillor Linda Woodings added: “We don’t particularly want to introduce charges for this but we have to balance our budget at the end of every year, so we are trying to look for the least-worst ways to balance our budget.
“I hope people accept we are where we are, as are other local authorities in the country.”