Car park charges increased without a new parking order
24 April 2024
The charges that Cornwall Council makes for parking in its off-street car parks have always been contentious with much heat and angst generated every time that the Council tries to increase charges. Most councillors seem to feel obliged to argue against increases in charges particularly in their own electoral division claiming that any increase will result in reduced footfall in their town centre to the detriment of local retail businesses. Councillors frequently lobby for concessions in charges for locals, for regular users, for season tickets etc. But car park charges are a major source of income for the Council and any failure to keep charges up to a reasonable level has a significantly detrimental effect on overall Council budgets. In addition, car park charges are meant to act as an incentive for people to consider alternatives to driving such as catching a bus.
Every year the Council reviews charges and officers come up with the latest wheeze to try to balance all the competing interests and usually end up upsetting everybody. However, eventually a scheme is put forward and is agreed upon by the Cabinet, at which point it has to go through a particular legal process of publishing and making what is known as a "Cornwall Council (Off Street Parking Places) Order”. This year, on 14 February, Richard Williams-Pears, portfolio holder for Transport, signed off the 2024 Order. The formal declaration of the Order was published on the Parking Consultations page of the Council website with a link to the actual order. The order details all the charges applicable at every Council owned car park. For example, in what are known as zone A car parks (the most expensive ones including Truro), the charge for a full day (anything over 4 hours up to 24 hours) is £10.00. The report that accompanied the publication of the Order made it clear that the charges were generally not being increased from the 2023 levels. The recommendation said, "That the Portfolio Holder for Transport approves The Off-street Parking Places Order 2024 (Appendix 1) for implementation from 1 April 2024 noting that the changes from the 2023 Order are limited to: 1. amendments to the Multi-purchase Sessions; 2. an extension of the maximum stay period in Old Bridge Street, Truro; 3. that the following car parks are revoked from the Order: a) Grenfell Avenue, Saltash, b) Chy An Gweal, Carbis Bay; 4. that the following car parks are added to the Order: a) Permarin, Penryn b) Ponsharden, Falmouth; the introduction of the Resident Season Ticket Scheme; the introduction of a self-contained motorhome tariff in The Crescent, Bude; the removal of ‘Reserved Permit parking’ from Church Street, Falmouth."
However, just two weeks later, the Council published in the West Briton and on boards at car parks notices about new charges, all approximately 5% more than the charges in the official Order. See sample of notice published for the Truro area. The notices were not published on the CC website. These new charges were the ones that came into effect on 1 April.
Publishing notices such as this one in the local media and at the car parks is part of the “consultation” process that has to be done prior to making an amendment to a Parking Order. However, consulting is not the same as deciding to proceed and, strangely, there is no record on the Council website of how the official Decision was made by the Council to implement these charges. If you search on the Decisions page of the website, you will find the Decision made by Richard Williams-Pears on 14 February with all the detailed background papers, but there is no Decision about the implementation of the new charges proposed just a couple of weeks later.
I can only conclude that this decision to increase charges at the last moment was taken by officers when they realised that there was a black hole in the car park budget, maybe because of the significant impact of the Just Park Wallet massive discount scheme, see Cut price parking. They decided to boost income from charges by 5% with no democratic debate and hoped that nobody would notice.
Whether or not the new charges are legal is a moot point. As this website is primarily about bus services rather than car parking, I will leave others to consider this issue.
