Council carparks set to remain free until September – Council Leader indicates the ‘days of carparks as a cash cow are over’ – if he gets political support

Free parking in all car parks owned by Wrexham Council is set to remain in place for the next few month, with a debate started on if the council should be thinking longer term on such promotions.

The local authority suspended its parking charges in March in a bid to “support those going about delivering critical services and doing essential food shopping”.

It was also hoped the removal of the charges would support those who need to do “essential food shopping”, along with those who work in healthcare, social care, supermarkets and banks.

Next week members of the executive board will be asked to approve plans to continue with the suspension of parking charges in council car parks until the end of September.

Speaking earlier this week Leader of Wrexham Council, councillor Mark Pritchard said: “We’ve had a political discussion across the alliance and we’ve already agreed that we will continue in this vein.

“The reason for it is I think it would be very remiss and wrong on moral grounds alone that if you were to start charging car parks in the town centre and council car parks when there’s nothing to do or shop in Wrexham.

“Some other authorities have been criticised and I’m surprised there’s no public okay on it. But what we’ve done, we’ve led the way we decided that we won’t charge.

“I’m pleased that I’ve got the political support, and that was hundred percent support across the alliance for it.”

The decision to carry on with free parking while the local authority is losing £1 million a month was also defended by Cllr Pritchard.

He said: “Why should someone come and pay to use our car parks if the town centre isn’t open? It’s just morally wrong.

“We we are trying to help and support businesses throughout Wrexham on the businesses which are located in the town centre.

“The Welsh Government have said there’ll be an announcement on the 18th (June), well, that will be too late for me. I think there should be announcements before then to say that the economy of the town centre has been open up on the 18th.

“We hope that people start coming back into the town centre to use it.”

Cllr David Bithell, deputy council leader and lead member for environment and transport, added: “Subject to executive board approval they will be suspended until the 30th of September to allow the startup of the local economy.

“Many shops are still closed, many businesses are still closed.

“In the next few months, I would imagine that we’ll be looking at a phased approach to recovery in the economy.

“The town centre is obviously important to us as politicians and this gives local businesses traders and shopkeepers opportunity to recover their businesses and that’s why we’re making the suggestion that we suspend charges to help boost to the economy and local businesses an opportunity to start up again.”

It was also indicated that the days of car parking charges being used to generate funding for the council could be over.

Cllr Pritchard added: “I think the days of local councils using car parking charges as a cash cow to generate income for the economy for the council’s have gone. That’s how I see it.

“I think you’ve got to revisiting car parking charges in town centre, because you’ve competing with out of town centres when the car parking is free.”

“I don’t like shopping centres out of town because they have got no atmosphere, it’s got no soul.”

“If this administration has a commitment to support the town, and keep on preaching that we want to support the town and bring people in, we have to give something. We can’t change the business rates and the council tax, that’s outside our decision making. But on the car parking, we can. There are two issues in town centres, business rates and car parking let’s be frank about it. We should do what we can.”

Delighted at the return to pre-pandemic normality of a possible local political beef, we jumped in and pointed out that the Council Leader had mentioned all the above in terms of ‘if he had political support’, with the implication that if support was there the cash cow of carparks could mean free or reduced charges for the town.

With the Deputy Leader, and administration partner, Cllr David Bithell also taking part in the Zoom we thought it would be rude not to poke him, the Lead Member for the Environment – a department that has a large revenue every year from the town’s parking machines on the idea. We pointed out that the pandemic recovery period in documents before councillors refers to an 18 month period whereas the parking report looks to September, we also noted the political support on future desires to have free parking for a longer period of time, and invited his views.

Cllr Bithell replied not really answering the political support point, “I think our view at the moment we’ve taken a report to the executive board to suspend carpark charges until the end of September. That does come at the cost to the cash limited budget of approximately £150,000 pounds loss of income.”

“But the reality is would we have got that income? Because most of the businesses at this present time are closed, or are about to start reopening in the coming months ahead.