This week we take a look at new car park charges, reductions in PCSO numbers, more dental appointments - or not, Somerset still struggles to balance the books, good news in Watchet and stargazing.
The new parking policies (really new charges) report is going to Scrutiny Committee on Monday (24 Feb) and then Executive on 3 March (not 26 Feb) and then it’s due to go to full council on 5 March as part of the budget. It’s important to note that the net income is included in the proposed budget and financial plan, so then becomes baked in, despite any consultation that follows, that at best can only look at small changes and will still need the saving to the council from the new charges. If agreed, these will cause big problems in Wiveliscombe and Milverton, where parking is currently free and used by many residents, who have no parking at their homes and no alternative, but to add to the many existing problems from parking on-street. Other areas may be similarly impacted by unintended consequences that are not covered in the council report. Some of us are and will be raising these.
"It's not my duty as Mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. For me, it's the same as if you bought a cow, or a refrigerator, and then asked me where you're going to put them." ( The Mayor of a thriving small Spanish town)
If you rent or buy a house, you pay more if it has a private parking space. Why should taxpayers fund free parking for residents? If your answer is that it will cause problems with on street parking, the answer to those resulting problems is to also charge for the on street parking and/or enforce parking restrictions. We can't keep on growing the car population much faster than the human population as we are!
Hi Andrew. Mary Portas' conclusion that there should be free parking for town centres was deeply flawed, and something we see from retail representatives whenever parking is raised as an issue. Better surely to look at the hard evidence of the true cost of free parking to society, best shown by the work of Professor Donald Shoup. His work over many decades has shown that there is a high cost to free parking, and that actually market mechanisms are far more effective at ensuring parking is priced appropriately, matching supply and demand. Now, of course the council is NOT proposing to use that evidence, so every year we have the nonsensical approach of taking existing prices and adding a percentage, without any understanding of the demand at each car park by day and hour. So, we have car parks where demand clearly exceeds supply most of the time, such as The Crescent in Taunton, which means the parking there is underpriced. Meanwhile Tangier car park is underused most of the time, which tells you it is overpriced. The differential is so small that many drivers would ratehr sit and wait for a space at The Crescent than walk a bit further from Tangier. Shoup would advocate that you do the work to understand demand, then price accordingly, adjusting prices every six months, up or down, according to usage. The sweet spot is where pricing means drivers arriving will find at least one or two spots available on arrival with no queuing/waiting for spaces.
It shouldn't be a "political" decision at all to set parking prices. Use market mechanisms. Of course if you have some car parks which are then shown to be routinely underutilised, then it makes sense to use them for something else, such as housing.
Prof Shoup, recently deceased, was working in the USA where over provision of free parking is a much bigger problem than here. But the principles of applying market pricing apply everywhere, and in many countries his ideas are taking root. Drivers pay the market price for their car and fuel, tyres, servicing etc. Why should parking be different? Why should non-drivers subsidise the transport choices of drivers, especially as they undermine the viability of the alternatives?
I suggest that many motorist will simply park on-street, instead of paying for 'out-of-hours' car parking.
After all, parking on single yellow lines, mostly Mon-Sat 6pm-8am and all day on a Sunday is free.
All the streets close to the town centre will become clogged up much to the irritation of the local residents.
A few years ago Somerset West and Taunton District Council introduced parking charges, at council-owned car parks for blue-badge holders.
Now whether you think that just because your a blue-badge holder doesn't neccessarily mean you are poor, is not the issue, but many blue badge holders, myself included, parked on-street (my late mother was the blue-badge holder) instead of paying to park in a car park........why would anyone in their right mind pay to park when it's free on-street?
If motorists have to pay to park out-of-hours, they might think twice before going to see a show at The Brewhouse Theatre or veterans reunions at The Lawns Social Club.
....it's known as the 'Law of Unintended Consequences', but apparently SC are unable to see beyond their snouts in the trough, possibly too busy looking at their pay packet or completing their expenses claim!
Yes it would seem foolhardy to introduce Sunday charging without also extending single yellow line restrictions that currently apply Mon-Sat to Sundays too. Resident's parking scheme hours may also need considering.
Except that in many of those market towns the free car parks and unlimited on street parking is taken up by people parking all day such as shop managers/owners and their staff, and thus not available to potential customers. I suggest in most cases these towns would be best served by controlled parking favouring relatively short stays. Market pricing is still likely the best way to manage the spaces. Bear in mind that for some car parking the market price will be zero.
You are right that the market should be taken into account. Unfortunately the special deals (rates?) that have facilitated free parking for out-of-town-centre shopping is what our town centres are up against in the real world. Piling on additional charges in town centres to plug Council revenue holes just makes matters worse for businesses in rural town centres. These centres are not just “nice to have” but are core to maintaining a real sense of community and place. It would be marvellous If bus services were a realistic option but they are nowhere near the frequency standard required. In belt-tightening times I very much doubt they will get to that standard given the failure of previous attempts.
Last time we had a consultation the Council disingenuously relied on research to show towns preferred to have paid parking. A closer examination showed the research related to Glasgow, Southampton and Coventry (from recollection)!
Such a shame the Govt. (I think) has pulled funding on the single parking App project.
Your description of the council’s blindness to the economic damage of parking charges is spot on. We live in a world of administrators who obsessively need to justify themselves. So they only focus on things they can measure to demonstrate how clever they have been. “Look at the additional charges clever me has raised” (ignoring the consequential damage to business as we cannot directly measure it). No, you are not being clever to ignore the bigger picture, you are being self-serving. Grrr. The biggest hit is when the charges are introduced in the first place and the plethora of inconvenient Apps and loss of cash options has made that even worse. Keep up the good work.
Your description of a capitalisation direction in Somerset is inaccurate and potentially misleading. This isn't new money coming from the Government, but a firesale of investment assets, to the detriment of all council taxpayers.
Somerset Council are allowed to sell assets from their investment portfolio (often at a loss as a self-declared distressed seller having declared a "financial emergency") in a poor commercial market. That money raised from selling assets bought for income generation is then used for day-to-day spending eg redundancy costs, budget shortfalls and used up in just one year.
The issue is that having sold an income-generating asset, not only is the income lost (which will grow over time), but the debt and interest still has to be paid over the next 30-40 years and capital growth is also lost. That one-off money is gone in one year, leaving taxpayers on the hook for mortgage and interest payments for decades to come.
In your own life, would you sell a buy to let property at a loss, lose the rental income, whilst retaining all of the mortgage payments (without any asset behind it) for the next 30 years?
It's so desperate and short term, that is why special Government permission is needed.
Your children and maybe their children will be paying for this over coming decades.
The new parking policies (really new charges) report is going to Scrutiny Committee on Monday (24 Feb) and then Executive on 3 March (not 26 Feb) and then it’s due to go to full council on 5 March as part of the budget. It’s important to note that the net income is included in the proposed budget and financial plan, so then becomes baked in, despite any consultation that follows, that at best can only look at small changes and will still need the saving to the council from the new charges. If agreed, these will cause big problems in Wiveliscombe and Milverton, where parking is currently free and used by many residents, who have no parking at their homes and no alternative, but to add to the many existing problems from parking on-street. Other areas may be similarly impacted by unintended consequences that are not covered in the council report. Some of us are and will be raising these.
Thanks Dave - that's a really important point about the assumption in the budget that the parking charges will be passed and agreed.
"It's not my duty as Mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. For me, it's the same as if you bought a cow, or a refrigerator, and then asked me where you're going to put them." ( The Mayor of a thriving small Spanish town)
If you rent or buy a house, you pay more if it has a private parking space. Why should taxpayers fund free parking for residents? If your answer is that it will cause problems with on street parking, the answer to those resulting problems is to also charge for the on street parking and/or enforce parking restrictions. We can't keep on growing the car population much faster than the human population as we are!
Hi Andrew. Mary Portas' conclusion that there should be free parking for town centres was deeply flawed, and something we see from retail representatives whenever parking is raised as an issue. Better surely to look at the hard evidence of the true cost of free parking to society, best shown by the work of Professor Donald Shoup. His work over many decades has shown that there is a high cost to free parking, and that actually market mechanisms are far more effective at ensuring parking is priced appropriately, matching supply and demand. Now, of course the council is NOT proposing to use that evidence, so every year we have the nonsensical approach of taking existing prices and adding a percentage, without any understanding of the demand at each car park by day and hour. So, we have car parks where demand clearly exceeds supply most of the time, such as The Crescent in Taunton, which means the parking there is underpriced. Meanwhile Tangier car park is underused most of the time, which tells you it is overpriced. The differential is so small that many drivers would ratehr sit and wait for a space at The Crescent than walk a bit further from Tangier. Shoup would advocate that you do the work to understand demand, then price accordingly, adjusting prices every six months, up or down, according to usage. The sweet spot is where pricing means drivers arriving will find at least one or two spots available on arrival with no queuing/waiting for spaces.
It shouldn't be a "political" decision at all to set parking prices. Use market mechanisms. Of course if you have some car parks which are then shown to be routinely underutilised, then it makes sense to use them for something else, such as housing.
Prof Shoup, recently deceased, was working in the USA where over provision of free parking is a much bigger problem than here. But the principles of applying market pricing apply everywhere, and in many countries his ideas are taking root. Drivers pay the market price for their car and fuel, tyres, servicing etc. Why should parking be different? Why should non-drivers subsidise the transport choices of drivers, especially as they undermine the viability of the alternatives?
It’s very interesting what you bring to the table. There’s a certainty that there’s been a lack of research behind these changes.
Your observation about percentage rises is hard to argue with.
I’d suggest that where market pricing works best is in larger towns and cities.
I suspect, you may well disagree, that for small market towns the presence of free parking is still adding value.
The market argument depends to some extent or other on good and multiple alternative options being available.
Unfortunately this tends not to be the case in the smaller rural communities. Just a thought?
I suggest that many motorist will simply park on-street, instead of paying for 'out-of-hours' car parking.
After all, parking on single yellow lines, mostly Mon-Sat 6pm-8am and all day on a Sunday is free.
All the streets close to the town centre will become clogged up much to the irritation of the local residents.
A few years ago Somerset West and Taunton District Council introduced parking charges, at council-owned car parks for blue-badge holders.
Now whether you think that just because your a blue-badge holder doesn't neccessarily mean you are poor, is not the issue, but many blue badge holders, myself included, parked on-street (my late mother was the blue-badge holder) instead of paying to park in a car park........why would anyone in their right mind pay to park when it's free on-street?
If motorists have to pay to park out-of-hours, they might think twice before going to see a show at The Brewhouse Theatre or veterans reunions at The Lawns Social Club.
....it's known as the 'Law of Unintended Consequences', but apparently SC are unable to see beyond their snouts in the trough, possibly too busy looking at their pay packet or completing their expenses claim!
Yes it would seem foolhardy to introduce Sunday charging without also extending single yellow line restrictions that currently apply Mon-Sat to Sundays too. Resident's parking scheme hours may also need considering.
Except that in many of those market towns the free car parks and unlimited on street parking is taken up by people parking all day such as shop managers/owners and their staff, and thus not available to potential customers. I suggest in most cases these towns would be best served by controlled parking favouring relatively short stays. Market pricing is still likely the best way to manage the spaces. Bear in mind that for some car parking the market price will be zero.
Castle Cary’s free on-street parking is limited to 2 hours and largely honoured. Poor behaviour is not an insurmountable hurdle.
You are right that the market should be taken into account. Unfortunately the special deals (rates?) that have facilitated free parking for out-of-town-centre shopping is what our town centres are up against in the real world. Piling on additional charges in town centres to plug Council revenue holes just makes matters worse for businesses in rural town centres. These centres are not just “nice to have” but are core to maintaining a real sense of community and place. It would be marvellous If bus services were a realistic option but they are nowhere near the frequency standard required. In belt-tightening times I very much doubt they will get to that standard given the failure of previous attempts.
Last time we had a consultation the Council disingenuously relied on research to show towns preferred to have paid parking. A closer examination showed the research related to Glasgow, Southampton and Coventry (from recollection)!
Such a shame the Govt. (I think) has pulled funding on the single parking App project.
Your description of the council’s blindness to the economic damage of parking charges is spot on. We live in a world of administrators who obsessively need to justify themselves. So they only focus on things they can measure to demonstrate how clever they have been. “Look at the additional charges clever me has raised” (ignoring the consequential damage to business as we cannot directly measure it). No, you are not being clever to ignore the bigger picture, you are being self-serving. Grrr. The biggest hit is when the charges are introduced in the first place and the plethora of inconvenient Apps and loss of cash options has made that even worse. Keep up the good work.
It is frustrating isn't it. Thanks for the kind words
I should have added that supply and demand based pricing maximises income for the council too.
Your description of a capitalisation direction in Somerset is inaccurate and potentially misleading. This isn't new money coming from the Government, but a firesale of investment assets, to the detriment of all council taxpayers.
Somerset Council are allowed to sell assets from their investment portfolio (often at a loss as a self-declared distressed seller having declared a "financial emergency") in a poor commercial market. That money raised from selling assets bought for income generation is then used for day-to-day spending eg redundancy costs, budget shortfalls and used up in just one year.
The issue is that having sold an income-generating asset, not only is the income lost (which will grow over time), but the debt and interest still has to be paid over the next 30-40 years and capital growth is also lost. That one-off money is gone in one year, leaving taxpayers on the hook for mortgage and interest payments for decades to come.
In your own life, would you sell a buy to let property at a loss, lose the rental income, whilst retaining all of the mortgage payments (without any asset behind it) for the next 30 years?
It's so desperate and short term, that is why special Government permission is needed.
Your children and maybe their children will be paying for this over coming decades.