With yet another year of parking charge increases, this council
is driving away visitors to this once beautiful and historic market
town. With few visitors, our town centre has become an almost ghost
town, businesses genuinely struggle to survive, those that do
continue find it difficult to earn a reasonable income. The
continued increase in parking charges not only contributes directly
to fewer visitors, but also affects people who work in the town
centre that depend upon their own transport with access to
reasonably priced parking facilities. With some parking charges
increasing by up to 100%, the council has in effect taken almost
75% of the latest budget increase in personal allowances, this is
totally unacceptable and needs to be challenged.
Started by: Richard Boulter
On reaching 1 signatures An officer will investigate the matter further
This ePetition ran from 13/04/2018 to 01/06/2018 and has now finished.
4 people signed this ePetition.
Chesterfield Borough Council reviews its parking charges annually, ensuring they offer affordable parking for shoppers and workers in our town centre. There has been no increase in parking charges since 2015/16 however it was deemed necessary to make sensitive changes for 2018/19. In 2015/16 we specifically focussed on attracting shoppers and visitors to the town centre by encouraging them to stay longer with the introduction of a £3 for 3 hours parking at any of our car parks, the intention being to support local business and give visitors plenty of time to shop, eat out, meet friends etc with this reasonable price to park, this has proven popular and this price point has not been changed as part of the 2018/19 review.
Alongside this we standardised our all day parking charge at our fringe car parks to just £5 if bought at face value on the day, or £3.50 (now £3.60) if purchased in advance with the Scratchcard options. This again is popular and Scratchcard sales are extremely well used for all day parking by workers and commuters.
It is worth noting that Chesterfield town centre has currently 93% shop occupancy, which is well above the national average for a town of our size.
The overall price increase for 2018/19 is actually just over 3%, the price increase at Ashgate Road from £1 to £2 still offers exceptional good value for all day parking and generates a more realistic return on what is a valuable land asset, as a Council we have a duty to ensure that all our income streams are managed to ensure best value is achieved from them, and is not being subsidised at the expense of other Services or the Council Tax payer.
Residents of the Borough benefit from free parking on numerous town centre surface car parks, the period this covers is Monday to Saturday before 10am and after 3pm, with free parking all day on Sunday on these sites. Residents receive yearly in their Council Tax bill a permit they must display in their car to take advantage of this offer, monitoring of this offers shows a high uptake with up to 70% of vehicles parking during the hours of operation taking advantage of this scheme.
We aspire to maintain our industry recognised Parkmark
accreditation for delivering a good standard of parking, as such
car parks are costly to maintain, they have to be inspected
regularly to ensure the surfaces are not hazardous, there is
sufficient lighting and that the CCTV coverage is adequate and well
maintained. Car parks also attract significant business rates along
with other operational costs, any income generated from charges is
re-invested into ensuring these facilities are safe, clean and
welcoming ensuring we maintain our Parkmark
accreditation.