Powys Council car parks 'are not a cash cow', says chief
Powys County Council's car parks are "not a cash cow", the county's roads chief has insisted.
Jackie Charlton insisted that money raised in the county's car parks is being reinvested in drivers who use their cars to get into town centres.
And she said she hopes research can be done to find out exactly what mode of transport people take when visiting town centres in Powys.
At a meeting of Powys County Council's Economy, Residents and Communities scrutiny committee on Thursday, June 12, councillors received a long awaited final report on the car parking review which has produced new recommendations.
Car parking fees were increased as part of the 2023/2024 budget by the Liberal Democrat/Labour/Green administration which came into force in April 2023.
But the move has been sternly opposed ever since which led to a working group being set up in the autumn of 2023 to review the fees as well as other car parking arrangements.
Opposition councillors have wanted to reduce the fees in a bid to get people to start using car parks again so that they visit businesses and shop in the town centres and in doing so providing a much needed boost the economy across the county.
Cabinet member for highways, transport and recycling, Cllr Jackie Charlton (Liberal Democrat) said: 'In the last 12 months or so I've not had correspondence from anybody on the car parks, but I know they are awaiting the result of this report eagerly.'
Cllr Pete Lewington (Conservative) said: 'Please don't think that the silence means the issue has gone away, people continually raise it with me here in Newtown.
'I'm concerned that this review is just focussed on raising money for the council and potentially pursuing an ideological desire to do away with cars in the pursuit of net zero.
'I don't think we should use income from car parking to plug gaps in our budgets.'
The report explains that during 2023/2024 sales of car park tickets had dropped by nine per cent, but income had increased by £136,000.
Cllr Lewington while 'pleased' to see the introduction of a one hour tariff he was concerned at the drop in ticket sales because this represented a: 'lot of visitor spending power.'
Cllr Lewington said: 'We should not be congratulating ourselves without considering whether this was a price worth paying for our town centres.'
He believed that council now faced a question of whether to continue using car parks as a 'cash cow' or have them be 'revenue neutral.'
This could increase footfall into town centres to help: 'our hard pressed businesses and tourist industry.'
Cllr Charlton responded: 'It's not a cash cow.
'The money that comes in from car parks goes out to support our highways for people who use their cars to get to our town centres.
'Something I'm quite keen to do is ask Aberystwyth University to do a piece of work that actually understands what footfall is from parking, buses and walking into our town centres.
'This so that we can get a much better idea and whether there are outside impacts as well.'
Cllr Charlton added: 'There are other ways of supporting businesses than just reducing car parking fees.'
Recommendations from the committee will be added to the report which is expected to go before the Cabinet later this summer.
The recommended proposals for car parks are:
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