ALMOST £24 million income has come from motorists parking in Brighton and Hove, an annual report has revealed. HENRY HOLLOWAY investigates where the money is spent and how it is raised.

FROM the 29,000 parking spaces and 14 council-run car parks throughout the city, Brighton and Hove City Council made a total of £23,976,491 from parking tickets and fines in the past year.

While the money is used to fund schemes such as concessionary bus travel and other public transport initiatives, some are worried about the effects the “high cost of parking” will have on the city.

In the annual parking report, council bosses said any profit raised from parking schemes is reinvested into sustainable transport projects. But residents and business owners said the high costs were driving people away.

Nick Mosley, chairman of the Brighton and Hove Tourism Alliance, said parking in Brighton was a “matter of concern”.

He said: “Whilst the use of public transport should obviously be encouraged, we simply cannot ignore that a very significant proportion of our day visitors are coming from the immediate region and South London by car, and often the decision is made on the day rather than planned significantly in advance.”

Mr Mosley also called on the council to consider building a park-and-ride scheme for the city to ease parking and traffic issues.

He said: “Having seen the levels of revenue generated by the council, this will only go to reinforce the general feeling within our industry that a world-class park-and-ride facility should receive unqualified cross-party support and capital funding to resolve the many issues of private transport in the city centre whilst minimising the current negatives on our car-owning visitors who should be welcomed to spend in the city, not demonised.

“Practicality and economic sense should take precedence over political dogma.”

The biggest money-maker for the council in the last financial year was on-street parking, with more than £9 million put into parking meters throughout the city.

The number of on-street parking locations in the city has consistently been on the rise, with a 32% increase since 2008/09.

The off-street parking raised a total of £5,343,268, with nearly £1.6 million coming from The Lanes car park, a further £1.1 million from Trafalgar Street car park and £1 million from the Regency Square car park.

Max Leviston, general manager of the Sea-Life Centre said he had been “campaigning hard” to ask the council to review its parking policy.

He said: “Parking significantly impacts the quality of visit the tourists have and it impacts their likelihood to return to the city.

“I did some work this year doing a survey on Marine Parade and Madeira Drive. I surveyed 740 people and 81% of those said they would not return to Brighton as they were disgusted with the parking price.

“It is a short-sighted decision to charge an incredibly high tariff for parking as it means those customers are going to sites like Hastings and Eastbourne.

“It is cutting off the hand that feeds us and pushing people to our competitors.”

Councillor Gill Mitchell, Labour spokeswoman for transport on the environment, transport and sustainability committee, said: “We think the very steep parking rises in the city have given out the unfortunate message that Brighton and Hove is anti-car.

“We would not want to see any further above-inflation level rises in parking fees.

“We would also want to review to see just how the tariffs are working and we are aware in some areas the parking fees are just displacing traffic away.

“If you reduced prices in some areas you would stop people parking their cars in residential areas, particularly in out-of-centre shopping areas.

“We would also want to look at some of the deals some authorities are able to do. We have never ruled out park and ride and we still see that as an overall solution for the parking issue.”

A spokeswoman for Brighton and Hove City Council said parking prices had been frozen for the past two years.

She said: “Earlier this year, the latest statistics from Tourism South East’s Economic Impact of Tourism Study were published, which showed that Brighton and Hove’s tourism industry had continued to prosper despite bad weather and a sluggish national economy.

“The study was from 2012, the latest period for which such data is available.

“The figures showed the total value of tourism to the city in 2012 was around £753 million, up 4.3% on 2011.

“Trips where visitors stayed overnight hit 1.4 million, up 5%. Total number of visitor nights spent in the city rose by 7.5% to 4.8 million.

“Figures released in May by the Office for National Statistics put Brighton as the eighth most visited town for city breaks – 50,000 more visitors stayed overnight in 2013.

 

• Permit zones grow

THE sale of parking permits in Brighton has continued to grow and is once again the second-biggest source of income for the council.

During 2013/14, the money raised from permit parking totalled at almost £6 million from the city’s 27,177 permit or shared permit spaces.

The amount was a more than £700,000 increase on last year’s total of little more than £5 million.

Central Hove has the highest number of permits, with 4,478 currently on issue – a slight fall from previous years when the area was running to capacity at 4,589.

But overall in the past year, the total number of residents’ permits has increased to 27,432.

The council also boasts the waiting lists for residents have more than halved during the past four years.

The waiting list for residents is now less than 400, a large drop from the 1,260 on the list in 2009/10.

The parking report also states almost 3,000 drivers in Brighton and Hove get half-price permit parking because they drive low-emission vehicles.

Councillor Pete West, chairman of the environment, transport and sustainability committee, said: “The parking review has enabled us to gather useful information about parking trends and the views of residents and firms from different parts of the city.

“This is helping us tailor services to specific needs and integrate parking with the rest of transport to improve services for everyone.”

 

• City makes £3.7m from parking fees

ALMOST £3.7 million was raised from penalty charge notices with nearly 120,000 issued in the city in the past year.

With a total of £3,658,701 raised from the 117,772 issued the council’s income was down despite the numbers issued going up.

In 2012/13 almost £4.4 million was made from parking fines but only 114,332 tickets were issued.

The council attribute this shift to new parking enforcement schemes being introduced in the city.

 

• Expenditure

PARKING schemes in Brighton and Hove are self-funding according to the council, with any money raised being reinvested.

The cost of civil parking enforcement runs at just over £7 million, with almost half being covered by the expense of enforcement.

In total £3.3 million is spent on enforcement, a fall of £200,000 from last year, while nearly £2.4 million is spent on admin costs.

Any surplus is then put back into the sustainable transport fund – with £10.2 million being invested in concessionary bus fares.

A total of £3 million goes to cover borrowing costs, while 1.2 million goes to other supported bus services.

In addition to this another £257,000 goes to other public transport services.

 

• New schemes

THE council is planning to roll out three new parking schemes.

The schemes in Bakers Bottom, Wish Park and in the Lewes Road Triangle are all set to be approved after the council said it received widespread support in consultations.

Councillor Pete West, chairman of the environment, transport and sustainability committee, said: “The council has worked hard to tailor these individual schemes to the needs of residents and businesses. All the schemes have been drawn up at the request of residents and ward councillors and are designed to ease parking pressure for people living in these areas, improve access and provide a better environment.”