A planned 10p an hour increase in parking changes across Herefordshire’s council-run car parks has been scrapped.
Proposing the move, the council’s head of transport Coun John Harrington said: “We had intended to raise car parking charges in line with inflation, but we had a last-minute notification that we had received more money in business rates collection than we thought.”
Liberal Democrat group leader Coun Terry James said: “I welcome this, but don’t think it’s enough.
“We have to re-think parking in our towns and our city otherwise they are going to die. You are forcing people to go to the big out of town supermarkets where they don’t have to pay, and you are killing off small independent traders by having a vendetta against car owners and drivers.”
True Independents group leader Coun Bob Matthews also called it “a move in the right direction”, but said: “You see a lot of car parks half-empty which you never saw years ago.”
Coun Yolande Watson of the co-ruling Independents for Herefordshire group said any empty spaces were “down to Covid and people working from home, rather than the coalition having a vendetta against cars”.
Ungrouped councillor Jim Kenyon said: “It doesn’t go far enough. The night-time economy in Hereford between Monday and Thursday doesn’t really exist, and parking charges have something to do with that.”
Councillor Paul Andrews, seconding the move as an amendment to the 2022-23 council budget, said: “I take the point, and we will look at this in future.”
The amendment passed with only Coun William Wilding of the Independents for Herefordshire opposing.
The approved budget also confirmed additional use of on-street pay-and-display charging in central Hereford, and the introduction of pay-and-display parking in Kington’s off-street car parks.
Coun James said people of Kington were “angry and bitter” at the council’s plans for the town.
Coun Harrington said: “I have listened to a consultation in the town, and will allow 40 minutes of free parking in the car parks to make up for the fact that Kington doesn’t have on-street parking as other towns do.”
Herefordshire Council is responsible for nearly 4,400 off-street parking spaces across the county, as well as around 1,600 controlled on-street parking spaces.
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