Councillors Guildhall Car Park
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Early in this post jimbow wrote about the 99 spaces at Crown bringing in £52k per year based on 80 filled but if the whole 99 who get freebies paid it would fetch in over £64k Monday to Friday just from the special essential staff members.
Does anyone know how many “TOP MANAGERS” get free Guildhall parking because if 50 of them went and paid at the People’s Market that would be an extra £32.5k and then there would be a lot of money made from using the Guildhall as short stay because it is the most convenient one for shops and the Monday market (as a Councillor!)
So maybe we save the Council over £100k a year? Just my back of a fag pack maths. And that is before anyone charges the Councillors.
Owain Glyndwr,
The Council would rather charge Blue Badge holders and generate £25k of income,rather than pay themselves for parking and generate as you say £100k.
[quote quote=144046]Owain Glyndwr,
The Council would rather charge Blue Badge holders and generate £25k of income,rather than pay themselves for parking and generate as you say £100k.[/quote]
So what happened to Difficult Decisions?
7) Staff and Member Car Parking
The Council currently provides free parking to some of its staff and to Elected Members in town centre car parks. It is proposed to remove this entitlement to encourage more sustainable modes of travel to work (e.g. public transport) and to generate additional income, as some may still choose to pay for parking in Council owned car parks.
It is estimated that this could generate additional income of approximately £49,000 in 2018/19.
—— Plans are also afoot to introduce charging for elected members and council staff, though that would be considered an internal matter and therefore no wider consultation is needed to implement them ——–
Did you know that visitors on business are told they cannot use the free car park and have to pay to park in another car park? I was told this today by a council worker.
Has anyone ever counted the empty spaces in a day in the guildhall car park? Why can visitors not park in a half empty car park?
There are thousands of factory workers and others in the Wrexham catchment area who daily and annually receive free parking at there place of work for carrying out there own job of work, so why not council staff they work and provide a service the same as everyone else receiving free parking at there place of work. Seems to me we have a crowd of complaining ninnies here with sour hearts and heads. Long live free parking for all council staff, or to please everyone lets charge them plus all workers in all local factories and elsewhere. So beware you agitators—stop your sabre rattling or you may find yourselves paying out if you receive freeparking.!!!
[quote quote=145498]There are thousands of factory workers and others in the Wrexham catchment area who daily and annually receive free parking at there place of work for carrying out there own job of work, so why not council staff they work and provide a service the same as everyone else receiving free parking at there place of work. Seems to me we have a crowd of complaining ninnies here with sour hearts and heads. Long live free parking for all council staff, or to please everyone lets charge them plus all workers in all local factories and elsewhere. So beware you agitators—stop your sabre rattling or you may find yourselves paying out if you receive freeparking.!!![/quote]
Herein lies the problem/crux of the debate:
Factory workers etc… have bespoke car parking on private land owned, leased by or communally purpose-built to serve the businesses in question – they are not taking from a finite pool of local authority revenue generating car parking spots allocated in the centre of town where space for parked vehicles is limited and multiple user bases are all competing for the same spots and by the laws of economics should dictate that they have to pay for them based on need PLUS also benefiting the community/town in general as revenues generated can be reinvested back into the town.
The parking at factories/places of work at out of town locations isn’t needed by any other vehicle users so by charging people to turn into work by car, there’s no public interest or business benefit for charging said users. These workers would just end up finding alternative less convenient means of coming into work, e.g. busses, walking, cycling which are all at higher risk of delays and being late for work than getting into a car and parking up. So there would be an economic cost to businesses to charge their staff to park at work in lost productivity. PLUS if we were at a state where ALL businesses charged their workers to park up, then if just ONE business decided to swallow the costs and then allow free parking, it would immediately have a perk advantage over all the other businesses (to the tune of hundreds of pounds annually in parking fees) and it would become the most desirable business to work for and would attract all the best staff, meaning other businesses would be forced to offer the same perk until all parking went free again.
It’s not even like everyone is demanding all public sector workers pay for their parking, it would make very little sense to start charging teacher to park in a school car park, but they fall into the same purpose built parking category as the private commercial cases described above and would face the same issues.
Now, we fall back round to the middle of town parking and councillors/TOP managers etc… This has been discussed and debated to death about the reasonings back and forth as to why free parking is deserved and not deserved, but in a way they have pushed the argument onto themselves.
a) Difficult Decisions consultation and resulting budget dictates that the council is forced to make vicious cuts across all areas to save millions. This as we know includes schools and welfare provision. So they are claiming that money must be found at all costs to help minimise the impact on the worst affected due to these austerity measures.
b) A council owned car-parking space has been identified as a unit of revenue generation within the town centre (but also now at country parks) and plans are in place to fund Ty Pawb via parking revenues (issues on this discussed in Ty Pawb thread). So this means that every single car parking space that is not being utilised in a paid manner is losing revenue to go towards the budget and running of the town in austere times.
c) The council have decided that disabled blue-badge holders parking spaces must now become revenue generating spaces. They have also decided that spots in country parks must also become revenue generating spaces. So people’s arguments AGAINST councillors/council workers having free parking is that if we are in such dire straits that all other parking spaces must now generate revenue, why should a large slice of spaces occupied by those affiliated to WCBC not be generating revenue. Everyone should be seen to tighten their belts and deal with the austerity together or chip in and help pay to get the town moving towards being back on its feet.
Personally, I’ve nothing against the council offering the FREE parking as part of a transparent perk as part of a council-related salary if they are then paying per FREE PARKING PERK offered an annual fee into the same fund that the rest of the parking revenues go into, so we are not losing out. Of course, they’d have to actually find a way to fund that perk that didn’t impact on budgets anyway.
Likewise, exploring a subsidised cycle to work or using public transport scheme for workers (possibility of applying for WAG funding to pay for) would encourage less council workers to use spaces and that would free up the bay for paying customers, thus increasing overall gained revenue.
So from where I stand the thought process is a wholly rational economic issue where we can maximise car parking revenues going back into the public coffers.
At the moment, the need to charge other previously exempt people (or locations) from paying to help deal with a deficit but not charge another set makes no sense. The matter gets more muddied when there is a huge conflict of interest from the decision makers. Who in their right mind would vote to take their own free parking away AND all the workers who they represent as part of their management structure? – the few Councillors who want to do it in the public interests have faced attacks both on a political and personal basis. Perhaps it is something that needs an impartial and independent review.
I’m also all for the option of going completely the other way and making all council owned car parks free for all to use (or perhaps free at certain times – e.g. evenings and weekends) in order to boost economic stimulus and get lots of people into the town centre to spend money and therefore generate an uplift in commerce setting up within the town. Of course we’d actually have to find a way to pay for that – council tax increase above current proposed levels would be unpopular. So it’s all just about numbers juggling in tough economic times.
Individual employees may have their car parking free at an industrial site but the car parking is not free to the business as they have to pay Business Rates so they are contributing to the Council. Why should a business pay rates on car parking to subsidise the car parking of Council Employees and Members?
[quote quote=145510]Individual employees may have their car parking free at an industrial site but the car parking is not free to the business as they have to pay Business Rates so they are contributing to the Council. Why should a business pay rates on car parking to subsidise the car parking of Council Employees and Members?[/quote]
A very interesting point. Is there are devolved system in place in Wales for the business rate application on car parks, or is it derived from the Valuation Office Agency?
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