Two West councils make over £25m from parking

TWO West councils made a combined profit of more than £25 million from parking operations in the last financial year, according to new analysis.

Bristol City Council and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council both appeared in a list of the top 20 councils for surplus from their parking operations.

London councils dominated the list as English councils made a combined £891 million surplus from parking activities.

The figure for 2019/20 represents a 5% decrease compared with the record £934 million total during the previous 12 months, research by the RAC Foundation found.

The surplus in 2015/16 was just £750 million.

Local authorities received an income of £1.746 billion from their parking operations in 2019/20.

The amount that councils spent on running their day-to-day parking operations was £854 million, not including interest payments or depreciation of assets such as car parks.

Any money made from parking activities must be spent on local transport projects.

BCP had a surplus of £13.9 million and Bristol one of £11.5 million.

RAC Foundation director Steve

Gooding said: “Parking management is quite a money spinner for some local authorities, and nationally it is a big business with total income of more than £1.7 billion.

“The surplus for 2019/20 is down a little on the year before which may in part reflect the impact of the first Covid lockdown which saw traffic levels plummet at the end of last March.

“The dip is likely to be much deeper for the current financial year given the range of restrictions over the past 12 months and the Government’s current plea that we should all stay at home if we can.

“Going forward there are likely to be many councils who are actually looking to cut parking charges as a way of encouraging more people to visit their high streets which are fighting for survival.”

The study is based on analysis of Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government data.

Only 35 of the 338 local authorities who returned figures reported a loss on their parking operations.

Many of the highest totals for budgeted surpluses were seen in London, with Westminster having the largest (£69.6 million) followed by Kensington and Chelsea (£38.8 million) and Camden (£29.0 million).

The biggest amount outside the capital was reported by Brighton and Hove (£24.8 million).