Car Parking Charges: Stevenage

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) on securing what has been an interesting and informative debate. It has been important to hear his views and how he wants the future of Stevenage to be shaped. It is also good to hear what a passionate and strong voice he is for his constituents.

This debate also gives me an important opportunity to set out the Government’s vision for the future of parking and town centres. Personally, I am passionate about town centres and the role that parking has to play. Town centres are important for our communities and local economies. However, the huge structural shift in retailing, with the rise of online shopping and out-of-town retailing, which my hon. Friend referred to, means that we are at a critical moment for our town centres. I am absolutely dedicated to giving local authorities, local enterprise partnerships and local communities access to the tools they need to transform their local areas and bring their town centres into the 21st century.

High streets and town centres have the potential to aid job creation and nurture small businesses, and parking plays a major role in providing the gateway to them. To date, the Government have taken significant action to support town centres and drive growth. Since 2010, we have helped to create more than 360 town teams and given over £18 million to a number of different towns. That is on top of a range of other steps, including supporting the phenomenally successful Great British High Street awards, which my hon. Friend alluded to, and the Love Your Local Market campaign. We have also introduced a package of important financial reliefs for small businesses, such as the £1.4 billion package of support for small businesses, which ended this year. In addition, we are bringing forward a significant £6.7 billion package of business rate relief, which will start next April and which will benefit many businesses on our high streets and in our town centres.

The best retailers, the best high streets and the best town centres are already adapting to change. They are becoming places where people go for a day or night out, to do some shopping—but also to have something to eat or go to the cinema—and to enjoy their leisure time. Achieving such adaptation is not always easy in many places, as I am sure hon. Members will know. The Government are absolutely committed to helping communities to adapt, but we cannot and should not bail out or prop up ailing businesses. We believe that plans and ideas for town centres must come from local areas themselves. It is for councils, businesses and communities in local areas, with the input of excellent Members of Parliament, to decide what they want high streets and town centres to look like and what they want their vision for the future to be.

The Government must support local people, building skills and spreading best practice, while doing everything we can at a national level to support high street growth. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy)—who has taken on the role of Minister with responsibility for high streets—is taking forward a strand of work through the Future High Streets Forum. He is working with many people from the industry on how the Government can make it easier for local areas, facilitating them in bringing our high streets up to the standard expected in the 21st century, and how a high street or town centre can be restructured to reflect that.

Let me now turn to car parking. This Government have introduced reforms to make car parking easier, allowing high streets to adapt to the needs of their communities. The previous Conservative-led coalition Government introduced reforms to make it mandatory for local authorities to give 10-minute grace periods for all on-street parking bays and all off-street car parks. This gives town centre customers greater flexibility and allows them to complete their business in the town centre without having to worry about whether they are running over their parking time by a few minutes.

The Government have also been concerned about how councils have used CCTV camera cars, which were being used purely as revenue-generating tools. That is why, in addition to grace periods, we banned local authorities from sending car parking tickets through the post. That means that individuals have a degree of certainty, because if they get a ticket now, they know that it will be there when they get back to their car. They will not receive it through the post a number of weeks later, when they may not recall that particular journey, but can instead corroborate the information given by a parking ticket.

I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage that we are now looking at further reforms to the local government transparency code, which picks up on his point about how car parking revenue is used. Following the recent consultation, we intend to amend the code so that motorists can see at first hand a complete breakdown of the parking charges their councils impose and how much money the charges raise. Since 2014, councils have been required to be more transparent about how much money they raise through parking charges and penalties. Our proposals therefore go even further, enabling drivers to see far more information about the levels of fines imposed, how many were paid and how many were cancelled.

Let me take this opportunity to commend the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick). The Parking Places (Variation of Charges) Bill offers an excellent opportunity for a small but sensible reform to local authority car parks. The Bill would give the Government powers to scrap the bureaucratic requirements on local authorities if they wish to lower their car parking charges. That is extremely important, because it offers a real opportunity for councils to be at the forefront, supporting their high streets. For example, they can respond to the opportunity of a town centre festival or event by quickly and flexibly reducing car parking charges. Where areas can do that for specific events, it makes a huge difference. It often attracts a lot of people into the town centre who may live in the area but who do not necessarily visit that town. They can get a feel for the town centre, and often it reminds them what is there and what they can do while they visit. That is extremely important. It would certainly make it easier for Stevenage Borough Council to implement the policy that my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage sensibly advocates.

The Bill would also provide for a consultation requirement if councils wished to increase the charges. Councils often get to the budget-setting process in the year and decide that they want to fill a hole in the revenue budget. Car parking charges are often seen as an easy fix. It is important for councils to have to engage with their local populations and consult to ensure that they are doing the right thing in taking that approach. Charging levels are often a significant concern to town centre businesses, and we think it is fit and proper that councils listen to those businesses before they set their charges. The Bill is on Second Reading on Friday, and I look forward to colleagues in the House supporting it wholeheartedly.

Turning to other matters, I note that my hon. Friend has been an active supporter and campaigner for three hours of free parking in Stevenage. I take this opportunity to say that I fully support his campaign. Many areas across the country have taken that approach, and it has made a significant and positive difference to the number of people coming into those areas. For example, North Lincolnshire Council has taken the commendable step of offering free parking to visitors to Brigg, Ashby and Scunthorpe to encourage more use of those town centres. The scheme offers one free ticket a day for each vehicle per visit, per site. In Northumberland, the council offers a disk-based scheme. It is good to see my hon. Friend from Northumberland, the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan). She will know that that scheme allows motorists to park at a range of towns across Northumberland.

I encourage other councils to take up that good practice. Where councils do not think about parking charges, it has negative consequences. In my constituency, Labour-controlled Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council regrettably took the step of increasing car parking charges in April, and it has already found that that has reduced the car park income to the council by £200,000. That shows what a negative approach that is and the damaging effect that putting up car parking charges can have on a town centre.

In conclusion, the Government are committed to helping our high streets to adapt to the changing needs of communities and making them fit for the 21st century, but we need to be clear that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every town is different, but parking has a key role to play in encouraging people to use our town centres. Everyone needs to play their part, with local economic partnerships, local authorities, businesses, communities and local Members of Parliament coming together. It was good to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage make that wide offer to his local area—to say, “Let’s work together to make things happen in Stevenage.” That is absolutely right. Local areas must come together to work on behalf of local businesses, bring local people into our town centres and deliver a package that they can be proud of. As we are seeing, many people are indeed proud of their town centres, because across the country more than 400,000 people have voted for their favourite high street in our Great British high street competition.

Question put and agreed to.