FEWER people have been using car parks since fees across Wiltshire went up, meaning the council has been getting less money than expected.
A new report, discussed at Wiltshire Council’s cabinet meeting on Tuesday 29th November said, “Overall a reduction in usage has been seen, which is generating a forecast underachievement of income at quarter two of £0.276m.”
The decision to raise some parking fees by 10p per hour was agreed by the council last February and came into force on September 1st 2022.
Wiltshire Council Liberal Democrat leader Ian Thorn criticised the decision.
He said, “We spoke very clearly at the budget meeting in February that we were opposed to increases in car park charges for two reasons: one was because what we needed to do was encourage people to come into towns as we were coming out of Covid and two, of course you get to a point where the charges are such that fewer people use the facility, especially now with the cost-of-living crisis.
“You get to a point where you can’t keep putting the charges up and expect to make more money.
“The whole decision to increase car park charges was a bad idea. It was bad for towns and cities across the county and bad for Wiltshire residents.”
Council leader Richard Clewer said in response, “You would normally expect with a recession to see a drop off in car parking use. People go shopping for longer, but less frequently. So instead of popping in, you save it all up for a single trip.
“The cost of running car parks keeps going up. We have car parks that probably lose money when you take into account business rates and the rest of it.
“But business rates alone are going up by around 12%. It’s an easy and simplistic argument to say car park charges are too high, bring them down and you’ll earn more money.
“Look at the reality of Somerset Council which is a Liberal Democrat-controlled administration. In opposition they were making all the same points, but now that they’re in power, their parking charges have gone up by more than ours.
“When we did have free parking in Salisbury it took less than two weeks for my residents to be begging to reintroduce parking charges because they couldn’t park because it was just used up by people who were working in town or living in town.”
He added the charges won’t be changed.
