Lib Dems against an increase in parking charges

The Guildford Lib Dems are against increasing all parking charges, and the imposition of the evening charge from April 2010, and we are not at all surprised at the level of concern from residents and businesses about the increases.

Given the current financial climate we should be helping traders and businesses, not hindering them. We know that businesses and traders in the town are very unhappy about the increase in charges, as the president of the Surrey Chambers of Commerce stated in the Surrey Times, 'the increase is outrageous.' It appears that there was no consultation with the business community, and we can only assume that this was because their likely repsonse would have been to disagree with any increase. We saw from the series of free parking Saturdays that any incentive like this brings more people to the town centre and the footfall in the town increases. These new tariffs can only encourage people to find less expensive places to park, and the increase in fuel costs more and more people will shop on line.

In the report to the Executive last week there is was no mention of the evening parking charges. When we argued against evening charges at the scrutiny committee last year we were told that it was ridiculous that anyone would object to paying £1. However, we have had numerous complaints from town centre residents that there is increased parking stress in the residential roads because people would rather spend more than £1 on petrol driving round to find a free parking place than put £1 in a GBC parking meter. There have also been problems with payments for the cross-over period from daytime to evening parking which have resulted in drivers being fined unfairly. A Facebook group against the parking charges had 375 members within weeks of being set up.

Pre-payment charges are a good idea, but as Councillor Anne Meredith pointed out at the Executive meeting, the parking office is only open during business hours, so provision has to be made for on-line payment to make this facility fully accessible.

We also must ensure that our Park and Ride schemes are not vulnerable to cuts, we should be promoting them more heavily, increasing the number of sites and extending the hours in order to reduce the congestion in the town centre, not using increased parking charges to fight congestion as has been suggested. This will be especially important when the replacement Civic opens as on site parking is reduced.

Only regular and extended bus services throughout the Borough, longer Park and Ride hours and an extended car share schemes will reduce the congestion in Guildford and help businesses and traders, increasing parking charges may reduce the traffic but will damage the town as this very fragile time for the economy.

Cllr Caroline Reeves - Friary and St Nicolas