Calls to halt Peterborough parking charge increases rejected

As previously revealed by the Peterborough Telegraph, the city council’s latest budget plans include increasing tariffs by 50p, while the fees for resident and visitor permits are also set to rise.

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The price of a six month permit will go up from £20 to £25 and a 12 month permit from £30 to £40. Daily visitor permit books of 10 will rise from £12 to £20.

The proposed hike from March 30 is expected to save the cash-strapped council £300,000 a year as it battles huge cuts to its government funding.

The authority announced earlier this month that all services will be on the table as it seeks drastic cutbacks to make sure it can survive in the future.

A recommendation to halt the planned parking and permit rises was agreed by opposition councillors at Monday’s budget scrutiny meeting. The stated reason given was that “this may reduce footfall in the town centre”.

Instead, it was said, the council cabinet should “consider making improvements to public transport to reduce the pressure on city centre car parking, increase town centre footfall and tackle climate change”.

But in an official response to the recommendation, the Conservative-run cabinet said: “To remove the increased parking charges from the budget would result in the loss of approximately £300,000 of savings, with no alternative provided. Any improvements to public transport were the responsibility of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority.”

Two further recommendations - to ensure properties acquired by the council are energy efficient and CO2 neutral, and to defer buying new refuse collection vehicles until more eco-friendly versions are available - were also agreed at the meeting but rejected by the administration.

The cabinet said it “did take the reduction of CO2 emissions in the city seriously and that properties acquired or built by the council were maintained to a high standard”.

It added: “In many cases it would be impractical or would have a significant cost implication to ensure properties were CO2 neutral.”

It also said delaying the replacement of new waste collection vehicles would only bump the cost to another year.

A further recommendation made at the meeting by the Liberal Democrats - that the cabinet increases the budget for tree planting rather than reducing it by £25,000 a year - was narrowly defeated after 11 councillors voted for it and 11 against, with five abstentions.

The council has a near £40 million budget deficit for 2020/21 which it is tackling, with around £16 million worth of savings still needing to be identified.

It is seeking to make a number of redundancies and has asked the Government if it can borrow the money for the one-off costs, rather than dip into its reserves.

Speaking at Monday’s meeting, Peter Carpenter, acting corporate director of resources, said: “The simple fact is that Peterborough has an above average population growth, but a below average council tax level as well as below average house banding for our properties.

“Peterborough has the eighth lowest council tax in Britain, but If we were simply to charge the average council tax then we would receive an additional £7 million per annum.

“If we were to have properties with an average house price banding, that would generate another £21 million per annum.”

Lib Dem group leader Cllr Nick Sandford raised the climate emergency that the council had declared last year, and said: “I’m worried that I cannot see anywhere in this budget funds put aside for the genuine reduction of greenhouse gasses and the tackling of climate control.

“It is all well and good saying that we are announcing a climate emergency and that we want to have zero carbon emissions by 2030, but not providing funding for the project sends out the completely wrong message to our citizens.

“Why is it that other councils up and down the country are planting trees in their thousands, yet we are cutting our tree-planting budget to a fraction of what is needed?”

Cllr Marco Cereste, cabinet minister for waste, street scene and the environment, said: “You know full well Cllr Sandford that we are planting trees every single day in their hundreds and that we are often way ahead of our fellow local authorities in such matters as greenhouse emissions reduction.

“Peterborough has more solar panels on its public buildings per capita than anywhere else in the UK, we’ve changed tens of thousands of street lights to LEDs and our staff are constantly being asked to think of ways in which we can reduce our carbon emissions.

“So while I understand and sympathise with your concerns, it would be wrong to say that nothing is being done and that this budget has nothing in it that relates to our goal to be carbon zero by 2030.

“Just because there isn’t £3 million in this budget for climate change doesn’t mean that we’re not doing a really good job already and have been for some time now, and that climate issues are always on our minds.”

Councillors will vote on the full set of budget proposals in March.