To report and debate the following Petition, containing at least 1000 valid signatures, in accordance with the Council’s Petition Scheme:
COUNCIL CAR PARK CHARGES
We the undersigned petition the Council to NOT TO CHANGE the current free parking arrangements provided in council run car parks in Sudbury, Hadleigh and Lavenham.
The introduction of extra car parking charges would further reduce the number of customers, employees and viability of retail businesses in the above town centres. Consequently business rate income will reduce as will retail choice offered resulting in less footfall. No economic assessment has been carried out in a rural area where car usage is essential as no reliable public service transport network is available. Only 14% of households do not have a car and many of those will be town dwellers.
Minutes:
96.1 The Chair read out the following petition as detailed in the agenda which received 8,758 validated signatures:
“We, the undersigned, petition the Council to NOT TO CHANGE the current free parking arrangements provided in council run car parks in Sudbury, Hadleigh, and Lavenham.
The introduction of extra car parking charges would further reduce the number of customers, employees, and viability of retail businesses in the above town centres. Consequently business rate income will reduce as will retail choice offered resulting in less footfall. No economic assessment has been carried out in a rural area where car usage is essential as no reliable public service transport network is available. Only 14% of households do not have a car and many of those will be town dwellers.”
96.2 The Monitoring Officer advised members of the Cabinet and Overview and Scrutiny Committee to exercise caution when speaking on this petition so as not to pre-determine themselves and find themselves exempt on being able to participate in any future items on car parking charges that may come before their committees.
96.3 The Chair outlined the process to be followed for the debate, detailed under Part B of Section 3.1 of the petitions scheme in the constitution.
96.4 The Chair invited Councillor Clover, the petition organiser, to present the petition to Council. Councillor Clover made the following presentation:
“The decision to raise a petition for no change to Babergh car park charges was prompted by a number of reasons.
1) A decision to implement car park charges was taken by the previous rainbow coalition and without this petition district council members, both new and old, would not be allowed to debate and scrutinise this proposal. At face value, this would appear undemocratic.
2) The power to implement this decision rests solely with the Cabinet and the Director of Operations, again undemocratic, given the issue at hand.
3) The refusal by cabinet to have any assessment on the impact this decision would have on our local economies, the lifeblood of our town centre communities.
4) No explanation as to why the cost relating to car parks has risen from £185k in 20/21 to £427k in 23/24.
5) The fact that the £427k cost figure appears to be a guesswork figure and does not account for some of the £300k business rates that will be returned within that figure.
Now that the budget has balanced, isn’t there even less need for car park charges?
Also ‘why should the cabinet leaders be seeking to introduce car park charges without having accurate financial information for a proper informed decision to be made?’
Cabinet leaders have said charges will have no impact, they are going to happen and decreasing traffic increases footfall and spend. There is no evidence to back these statements.
Deloitte and other expert analysts report that free parking is the most critical deciding factor in determining where shoppers shop and that car park charges can reduce car visitors by up to 30%.
The petition has been validated as receiving 8,758 signatures. Approx 11.6% of the Babergh adult population. A strongly representative proportion. These are the residents whose best interests we have promised to represent in return for the privilege of being elected by them. There were another 2000 shoppers who were not eligible to be counted. Make no mistake, these town centre car parks serve all Babergh wards. The petition shows us that visitors come from a wide radius including Colchester, Clacton, Ipswich, Needham Market, Stowmarket, Bury St Edmunds, Chelmsford, Braintree, Halstead, and surrounding villages.
All district councillors who represent these town centres have spoken out against these car park charges.
There is no guarantee that any income raised will be wholly used for the delivery of car parking services. This is simply an unjustified extra tax on our residents and business owners.
The basis for introducing car park charges has not been properly established. It has been hastily presented and is ultimately undemocratic. Therefore I ask you to support this petition.”
96.5 The Chair invited Councillor Busby, Leader of the Council, to respond to the petition. Councillor Busby made the following representation:
“Interesting – 8,000 signatures, free car parking. You didn’t ask me as I would have signed it especially if you could have got motor tax on there for nothing as well. I mean why not? It was just one half of a sentence, wasn’t it? What was going to be the cost of delivering this? You didn’t ask anybody whether they were prepared to lose things to get that.
One of the things I found very difficult was that you didn’t structure the petition in, I don’t think, the right way. You reckon in Sudbury that free car parking is probably the number one priority. I would have asked why can’t the Town Council take on the responsibility of the car parks to ensure that they are in control of car parking. It's interesting that Sudbury Town Council have a spend of over £800,000 a year and of that £800,000 zero is spent on car parks. It seems like a strange number one priority.
As for saying it’s not the right kind of tax, it actually is the perfect kind of tax. It is the kind of tax where if people use it then they pay for it. If people don’t use it then they don’t pay the tax. That is exactly the way we should be taxing people – not just taxing people across the whole spectrum which is what we do at the moment. I’m paying £10 a year for your free carparking in Sudbury and Hadleigh, so are the people out in the Shotley Peninsula, and I still have to pay if I go to Colchester or if I go to Ipswich so I’m paying twice. Would you like to pay for my brown bin in lieu of me paying for your car parking? No of course you wouldn’t. What do Sudbury have that they think they can demand money from everybody else? It isn’t special that way.
We have run a policy of discretionary taxes which is if you use a service you pay for that service. That is what happens with car parking. We know that we have a lot of money to try and raise but if it wasn’t for that I think I would still say that we should be having car parking charges. We have climate change problems, we have flooding, we have too much traffic in the towns, we have poor air quality, but you don’t seem to want to do anything about it in Sudbury.
We can’t keep burying our head in the sand – we have to do things and we have to make changes.
There is evidence to show that if you take traffic out of town centres, the more people will go in and spend longer in there because it is more comfortable. I don’t enjoy walking up and around the marketplace in Sudbury because there’s too much traffic. Once I get round the back it’s okay but in the centre it’s not attractive at all.”
96.6 The Chair opened up the debate and invited other Members to speak to the petition.
96.7 Councillor Regester stated that Sudbury Town Council was not in an adequate financial position to be able to take on car parking in Sudbury, that a trial removing traffic and parking in the Sudbury marketplace was being actioned in the summer, that he was an advocate for active and sustainable travel but that facilities were not currently in place to encourage this in a safe manner, the collation of 66 survey responses that stated 2/3rds of respondents were directly influenced by free parking on where they go shopping and that half of respondents would only still park and shop in Sudbury if the first hour remained free, the lack of appropriate funding to councils from the government, and expressed his opposition to implementing parking charges.
96.8 Members unanimously agreed to extend the meeting past 8:30pm.
96.9 Councillor Potter expressed concerns for potential changes to shopping behaviour with the implementation of parking charges and the negative effect this would likely have on local and small businesses, the impact on elderly residents by removing free and accessible parking, and the increased risks for congestion and dangerous parking.
96.10 Councillor Carruthers commented on the potentially detrimental impact that car parking charges would have on the Hadleigh high street, highlighted a survey undertaken in Hadleigh, as constructed by Councillor Dowling, which gathered 189 responses that stated: 186 people came to Hadleigh specifically to use the high street services; a mean distance of 5.4 miles was travelled; 67% would be unlikely to use car parks if charges were introduced; 65% were favourable to having the first hour of parking free of charge; and expressed herself that the council should be encouraging residents from outside the district to use services in our key towns as well as look to introduce more improved sustainable methods of transport.
96.11 Councillor Grandon started her representation by expressing concerns for the harm that introducing car parking charges would have on independent and small businesses in Hadleigh, that the survey undertaken in Hadleigh captured three main points: that there was overwhelming support from businesses to maintain free parking in Hadleigh (93% of respondents), that the implementation of fees would have a negative effect on businesses (63%), and that one hour of free parking would be negatively restrictive on their businesses (62%), the potential effects of charges on consumer habits, and stated that volunteers at the East Anglia Children’s Hospice (EACH) do three-hour shifts in line with the current free parking period and that this would significantly impact their ability to provide their services.
96.12 Councillor Saw commented the surveys undertaken by colleagues did not capture what services residents would be prepared to give up in order to achieve a balanced budget in lieu of implementing parking charges, raised the savings but overall negative impact on the council and its residents if certain services, such as planning enforcement, public realm, and communities, received cuts, and asked fellow councillors to give serious thought to what services would need to be cut if parking charges were not introduced.
96.13 Councillor Beer stated that he had spoken to residents in Sudbury about the petition and that he had received many frustrated comments, and discussed the implication of introducing parking charges on the risk of dangerous and overcrowded parking in residential streets, alternative methods of saving money to balance the budget, and Sudbury Town Council’s inability to sufficiently fund car parking for the district council.
96.15 Councillor S. Davies expressed that she believed the timing of this petition was premature, that a fully realised proposal on introducing parking charges had not yet been brought forward for discussion, the potential consequences of coming to a decision on the petition on future decision-making arrangements, and the need to at least explore implementing car parking charges due to the current budget situation.
96.16 Councillor Ward stated that he had only 12 emails from members of the public on the issue and that 66% had been against implementing car parking charges, spoke about the support express from some members of the public for introducing fees, the desire from residents for improved sustainable transport methods, the necessity for making up the current deficit in Babergh’s budget, the overwhelming support from residents for introducing car parking charges to avoid cuts to key services, and the detrimental impact on the delivery of key work if staff cuts were implemented.
96.17 Councillor Parker started his representation by congratulating Councillor Clover on the number of valid signatures on his petition and expressed that it was an admirable demonstration of democracy in action, further set out the importance of holding public debate around car parking charges, and raised that in 2011 the Sudbury Chamber of Commerce created a framework for a community interest company (CIC) of which the management of car parking could be placed under.
96.18 Councillor McCraw spoke about past consideration to implementing car parking charges by both the Overview and Scrutiny committee and Full Council, criticised the assumptions as put in the petition statement, and reminded Members of both the proposed process that car parking charges item would be following and that a current public consultation about car parking charges was still ongoing.
96.19 Councillor McCraw PROPOSED that the petition be noted.
96.20 Councillor Busby SECONDED the proposal.
96.21 The Chair allowed Members to continue on with the debate and speak to the proposal on the table.
96.22 Councillor Holt stated his previous differing views and decisions made on introducing car parking charges in past administrations, expressed that he had since changed his mind and currently does not support implementing fees, that parking charges would negatively impact businesses and tourism in the district as well as creating dangerous traffic issues, and that alternative cuts could be made within the budgets to balance the figures.
96.23 Councillor Newman spoke about the impact on local, independent businesses in Sudbury if free parking was taken away from customers and the trickle-down effect of losing visitors on nearby places such as Great Cornard.
96.24 Councillor Riley raised the impacts on consumer habits and visitor numbers to places such as Wickham Market and Woodbridge when parking charges were introduced, and that Councillors have an overwhelming duty to listen and enact on the electorate’s wishes.
96.25 Councillor Reece stated that most people naturally pay taxes for services that they do not use and reinstated that volunteers for charities in the key towns based their shifts around the provision of free parking.
96.26 Councillor Nunn expressed concerns for the detrimental effects on local businesses in key towns by introducing parking charges, and that implementing these fees would lead to an increase in congestion due to unsafe road parking.
96.27 The Chair concluded the debate and moved to the vote on the proposal to note the petition.
By a vote of 17 For, 12 Against and 1 Abstention
It was RESOLVED:
To note the petition.