Wirral Council’s Labour and Green councillors vote for increased on and off street car parking charges despite opposition from Conservative and Lib Dem councillors
By John Brace (Editor)
and
Leonora Brace (Co-Editor)
First publication date: Wednesday 11th August 2021, 11:44 AM (BST).
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Decision Review Committee (Wirral Council) 29th July 2021 Car Parking Charges Call In
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Decision Review Committee (Wirral Council) 10th August 2021 Car Parking Charges Call In
At the end of two lengthy public meetings which you can watch above (and you can read a report on the previous adjourned meeting here), a majority of councillors voted to uphold the decision of Wirral Council’s Environment, Climate Emergency and Transport Committee to go ahead with car parking charges options 1, 3 and 4 (as outlined in this report. The changes were opposed by Conservative and Lib Dem councillors but voted through by Labour and Green councillors, however Lib Dem councillor Chris Carubia voted in favour to consult on charges at new locations and increase charges at existing locations that charge.
Option 4 (which will be implemented in the next few weeks) is to change the car parking charges at existing Council car parks that charge in the hope of generating an further £500,000 a year.
Option 1 (which will be consulted on through the traffic regulation order process) is to propose charging at Council car parks that are currently free such as the car park at Fort Perch Rock in New Brighton pictured above and aims to raise an extra £300,000 a year.
Option 3 (which will be consulted on) is to propose charging for on street car parking at a variety of coastal locations such as New Brighton, West Kirby, Leasowe, Hoylake.
A recommendation that was made at the end of the meeting on 10th August 2021 for the first twenty minutes of parking to be free and for volunteers to be exempted from parking charges was lost with 6 votes against (Labour and Green) and 5 votes for (Conservative and Lib Dem).
If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.
Hi John, another nail in Wirrals coffin, my thoughts if wanting to park free is to use the supermarkets where parking is free do a bit of shopping or park in the side roads.
This council is short sighted and is trying to kill the trade generated by visitors. End of rant.
Thanks for your comment. The supermarkets tend to limit the time their shoppers can park for and the issue of displaced parking in nearby residential areas was brought up during the call in meetings.
I’ll be interested to see the ‘statement of reasons’ for the on-street parking charges when the TROs are published.
Thanks for your comment – I’m not sure if any statement of reasons will form part of the public notice that’ll be published in a local newspaper, or whether such details will be included in the detail of the proposals (presumably on Wirral Council’s website as I presume that Wirral Council would want to deter physical inspections of documents).
They say Councils are racking up billions from parking charges, even making more than they get from Council tax!