Parking service which made £4m profit is ‘unsustainable’ says council

Shropshire Council says its parking service is ‘unsustainable’ – despite making more than £4m in surplus charges over the past three years.

The claim came as a controversial new scheme of parking fees was sent back to cabinet for further scrutiny.

The authority says the increases, which are planned to take effect on April 1, are necessary in order to repair and maintain the county’s car parks – after admitting that a £4.3m surplus brought in by parking charges over the past three financial years had not been reinvested in the service.

The proposals were approved by cabinet in January, but were called in by the Labour and Liberal Democrat groups on the council after a backlash from Shrewsbury’s business community.

The changes will now be referred back to the council’s cabinet, which will discuss three recommendations made by the committee; to assess whether the level of charges in Shrewsbury is appropriate, to assess proposed changes to weekend and evening parking and to discuss the possible exclusion of Wem from some of the charging schemes.

Defending it’s position at a meeting of the council’s Economy and Environment Scrutiny committee on Monday, February 19, council highways bosses told councillors that after inspecting its 40 car parks in the last month it found defects which required “significant” attention.

“What will happen if we can’t get this service to a sustainable position is we will have to find money from elsewhere,” said interim Highways Assistant Director Andy Wilde.

“That will mean reducing service in other areas that we simply don’t want to do if we cannot make this service stand up, so the pricing increases are to ensure that this service can function and we can bring in much needed improvements.

“We have to look at charging more for the use of these car parks to make them sustainable and I haven’t documented the difficulties if we can’t achieve that but we’re going to have to make some fairly robust and difficult decisions around other services to plug that gap, and that’s something we’re keen to avoid.”

But Labour leader, Councillor Julia Buckley, demanded more detail on the financial position of the service, which showed that parking had made a profit each year for the past three years.

Figures given showed that in 2020/21 the authority generated a surplus of £1.4m, and a further surplus of £2.1m in 2021/22, added to an £800,000 surplus for the last financial year.

“So if we add the three years together, we’re heading towards four and a half million pounds surplus in the car parking account,” she said.

“[The] question as to why it wasn’t invested to up-keep these assets is absolutely fundamental but what it shows us is that your wording that this is an ‘unsustainable service’ is not very accurate. You have more than enough money in the three year roll-over to fund all the proposals in your report so there is absolutely no justification for any further increases.”

In response Councillor Dan Morris, Highways portfolio member, said that any surplus generated would be used to maintain the car parks, but admitted that previous surpluses had been allocated to “general transport spending” within the Highways budget.

Shropshire Council’s cabinet is expected to discuss the recommendations of the scrutiny committee in March.