A West London council leader has said he will consider comments made by a resident urging for a review of parking permit charges and the consultation process in the borough. Cllr Stephen Cowan, Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, made the assurance after hearing concerns about the scale of the recent price increases and the process involved.
The new charges, which were agreed by the council’s Cabinet last October before being introduced in February, represented the West London borough’s first hike since 2012. The Labour-run local authority has said the increases were designed to encourage people away from driving higher-emitting vehicles.
The new scheme meant resident parking permits were shifted to an emissions-based charging model, with a diesel surcharge included in the plans plus an additional fee for second vehicles. Permits for EVs, electric vehicles, also cost for the first time.
Under the previous scheme, resident permits were either £119 a year or £60 for vehicles producing 75g/km of CO2 or less. For second vehicles there was a flat fee of £497, while EVs were free. Under the new model, annual charges range from £125 to £340 depending on the emissions produced. Diesel and second vehicles cost more.
Following the implementation of the new charges a petition was set up by Stefan du Maurier on Change.org and the council’s website. The petition listed two key demands; that parking permits be reduced to align with inflation, which a Bank of England calculator suggests in December would have been £167.93 based on the £119 figure introduced in 2012, and that certain conditions must be met before any further pricing structures are implemented.
These included that a consultation must receive a minimum of 250 responses and record more than 51 per cent in-favour of any future changes, and that an “independent body of residents” be formed to co-approve any questions in the consultation. Due to the petition receiving 467 signatures on the council’s website, more than the 250 needed for it to go before Cabinet, it was discussed by senior councillors at Monday night’s meeting (July 14).
Officers had prepared a report in advance responding to the petition, in which they detailed the background to the introduction of the charging scheme, work done to publicise the changes and the rationale. On the petition’s request to set the cost of permits at a single rate of £167.93, officers wrote this would be “incompatible with the policy change requirement to tackle dangerous air quality in H&F by encouraging residents and businesses to change to lower-emitting vehicles.”
“The emissions-based charge model which was proposed and subsequently implemented has been successful in other London boroughs, ensuring those with higher polluting vehicles pay more,” they continued. “This proposal will lead to changes in vehicle usage, ownership and behaviour, and to an increase in the use of greener transport alternatives, such as cycling and walking within the borough.
“A single banded system would not create the deterrent required for change and would not support the Council’s 2030 Net Zero strategy.” Officers also reiterated permit charges have been frozen since 2012, that new 12-month, six-month and rolling monthly permits to help make paying easier, and that the changes do not affect the 2,472 residents with Disabled Blue Badge permits.
Attention was further drawn to the results from a 2023 borough-wide parking census, in which 49.18 per cent of respondents to a question on whether charges should be used to reduce the number of higher polluting vehicles strongly agreed or agreed with the sentiment.
“This is a standard format question routinely used in consultations, which shows significant support for the principle that has been applied of using parking charges to reduce the number of higher polluting vehicles in the borough,” officers wrote.
Resident Tom Holloway, who has supported Mr du Maurier’s petition, told Cabinet members both of his concerns about the level the new prices have been set at and what he claimed were ‘leading’ questions in the consultation. He also said he believed the council should be looking at implementing more 'positive' green measures, later giving examples such as supporting people wanting to move to electric vehicles.
“I believe your residents are thus asking for easy and honest engagement, to be helped to be greener by making it more affordable,” he said. “I understand that they want green policies that do not control their freedom of movement and disproportionately punish small local businesses and lower income families.”
Cllr Cowan asked Mr Holloway a series of questions, including what he would have done differently in terms of both the consultation and the new pricing. Mr Holloway said he would have looked at introducing a more “balanced cost”, taking into account lower income families with young children and essential work vehicles.
Leader of the Opposition, Conservative councillor Jose Afonso, also spoke, describing the petition as “immensely sensible” and asking the administration to accept its requests.
'I think we made a mistake in deciding to freeze the parking charges'
Cllr Cowan drew attention to the costs having not risen since 2012, telling attendees: “I think we made a mistake in deciding to freeze the parking charges. We should have put them up by inflation every year and made adjustments as the environmental agenda changed, because I think it was quite a difference for people when they came in and I think it looked like we’d hiked them up a lot.”
He said when in opposition he and his colleagues had seen the former Conservative administration increase charges on parking, which meant when Labour came into power in 2014 it believed the best thing to do would be to freeze it.
On the costs, Cllr Cowan said: “We spent a lot of time looking at those different prices and we may have gotten some things wrong. It’s very hard to work out if we do this, what will that do with this category of car? Can we encourage this?”
“We always look at things again and I will certainly go away and consider some of your comments and talk to my colleagues in the Cabinet about that,” he said to Mr Holloway. “I can give you that assurance.”
Cllr Cowan added the local authority will be in touch with Mr Holloway via the relevant Cabinet member, Cllr Florian Chevoppe-Verdier, in the coming months. Several other London councils have in recent years implemented emissions-based parking schemes including Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea. The City of London Corporation meanwhile agreed similar charges for its owned car parks.
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