Free parking - is it worth the money?

It's hard to tell whether this scheme is gibberish or not.​The money to pay for this free parking experiment is coming from the "Opportunity Fund" - £10k set aside by CCC for the Herne Bay councillors to spend on local projects.

I had fondly imagined that this would cover stuff that wouldn't easily be funded from any other part of the Council structure - the Christmas grotto at the Bandstand, a grant for the Umbrella Centre, that sort of thing.​

It appears, however, that it can be used for things that I would have thought came under the Highways budget (the new barrier in Mortimer Street) or CCC's traffic budget (this proposal). It looks and feels to me like the Council simply recycling the same money - CCC gives Herne Bay money which is then returned to CCC to cover the revenue that CCC loses through Herne Bay’s free parking experiment.​

Andrew Cook gave us a breakdown of where the money will be spent: £400 for advertising, £250 for recalibrating the machines, leaving £800 for the parking. I think his maths is a little out - £750 would be left to cover the cost of lost parking revenue.

One of the councillors, I think it was Peter Lee, revealed that the horrid little parking meters scattered across town are cleverer than I ever expected. They are linked in to some evil central parking brain, and chatter away all day long, boasting about how much money they’re taking.

Surely this takes all the guesswork out of estimating how much parking is making the Council, and how much free parking would cost them. Nonetheless, Andrew Cook says in the press article that it will give them "a clear idea of what it costs to do free parking". Peter Lee says the money being asked for is "a fair estimate of the income lost". CCC already know what the experiment is likely to cost - the parking meters have told them.

What they haven’t explained is how they will know if the experiment has succeeded, or what their criteria for success might be.

How is this going to be assessed? If someone arrives at 9:15am and leaves at 10:30am, how will anyone (or the parking meters) know they were ever there? Will there be a Council officer standing there every April morning, counting the cars in and counting them out again?

Peter Lee refers to the possibility of free parking being “self-funding” - what on earth does that mean? Presumably, he thinks that the £800 of lost parking revenue might pop up somewhere, somehow.

So what’s actually happening here - is our Council simply using some rather unsubtle money-shuffling to give the appearance of trying to help our town?

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Free parking trial for Herne Bay town centre approved by councillors

Shoppers will be offered free parking on weekday mornings next month in a bid to tempt them into Herne Bay. Councillors agreed to spend £1,400 on a trial of free parking between 9am and 11am, Monday to Friday, in the Kings Road car park where the market is held on Saturdays.

The money comes from Herne Bay Area Member Panel’s opportunities fund - a pot of £10,000 a year for community projects that benefit the town. It will pay for advertising, changes to parking meters and for any lost revenue from car parking charges.

Dylan Hampshire, of Cockett’s Mattresses, suggested changing the time and copying other town’s ‘free after 3pm’ schemes. Andrew Lawrence, who runs the Speciality Food Store in Mortimer Street, said both mornings and afternoons were difficult for traders:

“From 9-11am is a dead zone, as is the last part of the day. After 2.30pm, Herne Bay is dead. We are suffering then. We could probably open from 11am to 2.30pm and then close our shops and go home because we have so few customers.”

He said local people refused to pay anything for parking, and seafront charges also put holidaymakers off.

But West Bay councillor Peter Lee said parking was free for most of the year in Central Parade. Heron councillor Andrew Cook added:

“This is an excellent project that both residents and businesses have been pushing for. It will give us an accurate idea of what it actually costs to do free parking.”

Critics argued that the money was effectively going back into the council’s pockets, to replace the income lost from parking charges during the trial. But Cllr Lee, who is responsible for finance on the council, said it was important to be able to tell how much revenue was lost. He added:

“We can repeat it in the future if we can prove it can be self-funding. This is a fair estimate of the income lost.”

Officials also vowed to investigate another suggestion of extending the free parking in town centre streets from one hour to two. The Kings Road car park scheme will start in April.

thisiskent 12th Mar 2013