Rutland County Council considers restructuring car parking fees to fit with ‘tightening budgets’
A restructure of car parking charges in Rutland is on the horizon due to the county council's 'tightening budgets'.
The council's cabinet member for transport Cllr Christine Wise (Lib Dem) has asked the authority's scrutiny committee to consider ways to restructure parking.
Cllr Wise's request detailed in papers to go before the committee next week says: "Because of tightening budgets we need to look at ways of raising money without causing unnecessary distress. Rather than simply applying a blanket percentage rise, we think it is timely to look at a restructuring of the car parking fees. Change the balance. We would like scrutiny to look at this, consider the fees charged by neighbouring authorities and what we want to achieve in our Rutland towns."
The authority owns seven car parks in Oakham and three in Uppingham. Currently all car parks can be used free of charge for 30 minutes, with a £1.20 fee for one hour parking.
The council, like most local authorities, is trying to cut costs across all departments to make ends meet and its draft budget for the forthcoming financial year indicates that it wants to raise £1million in fees and charges. A breakdown has not been given, but increased parking charges would likely only contribute to a small part of it.
The report says to assist the scrutiny committee's work it has details of existing car park usage, including mobile car park payments and benchmarking of car parking charges of neighbouring councils.
It says: "We would like to consider having lower rates for the day rates in our long-term parking to encourage workers to leave the very central car parks for visitors and shoppers."
The authority is trying to attract more people to its shopping centres and has hired a consultant to come up with suggestions. Recent meetings have also been held with the county council, the town council and retailers about looking at current issues and thinking of ways forward.
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