Councillors will decide next week whether to put up the price of resident parking permits in Brighton and Hove.
They are being asked to agree a 9 per cent rise in the basic cost of an annual permit from £165 to £180.
The council offers a 50 per cent discount for low-emission vehicles and charges 50 per cent more for vehicles with higher emissions.
In homes with two cars, the price looks like going up by 6 per cent from £245 to £260 while a permit for a third car is expected to increase by 4.6 per cent from £325 to £340.
The council is also proposing a 9 per cent price rise for permits in areas with a light-touch parking scheme – from £110 to £120.
The cost of a second permit in a light-touch area is planned to rise by 5.6 per cent from £180 to £190 while a permit for a third car is expected to rise by 4 per cent from £250 to £260.
The cost of a quarterly permit looks likely to stay the same at £45 in areas with day-long restrictions while a six-month permit in light-touch areas is also likely be unchanged at £60.
Even the cheapest on-street charges look like going up 9 per cent from £1.10 to £1.20 for an hour.
Councillors are also being asked to agree higher car park charges, with 15 per cent increases on average proposed for Trafalgar Street, The Lanes, Regency Square and London Road.
The price of the shortest stays could go up by more than 20 per cent, most notably at London Road where the cost of an hour is slated to rise by 25 per cent from £1.60 to £2.
Drivers will be able to buy an all-day ticket to park at the King Alfred for £10 for 12 hours while a season ticket there could rise 25 per cent from £800 to £1,000.
There are no plans to increase permit costs for traders, hotels, doctors, schools or carers.
Business permits are proposed to go up 12.5 per cent from £400 to £450 for a year and 4.3 per cent for three months – from £115 to £120.
A decision on the parking fees and charges for the next financial year – from April – are due to be decided by Brighton and Hove City Council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee next Tuesday (19 January).
The proposed 2021-22 increases are said to be in response to a review of parking demand and the council’s Local Transport Plan.
A report to the committee said: “Improving air quality is a key objective for Brighton and Hove City Council.
“As part of a range of measures to improve air quality such as the Low Emission Zone, parking charges can also help to encourage less-polluting travel options and reduce emissions.
“In addition, congestion across the city can affect the reliability of journey times and long-term parking can reduce accessibility and the turnover of spaces.
“Better accessibility through a high turnover of vehicles being parked helps to support local businesses.
“Parking charges can help to encourage alternative transport choices and higher turnover of spaces.”
The council said that its profits – known as a surplus – helped pay for bus subsidies, free bus passes for the elderly and disabled, proposals in the Local Transport Plan and environmental improvements.
Last year the council made almost £34 million from parking – on and off street – and made profits of just over £19 million.
The cost of bus passes totalled almost £11 million and £1.2 million went on supporting bus services.
A further £2.3 million was spent on projects such as travel plans for schools, the New Road and Church Street junction and crossing, the railway bridge support in Chatham Place and work on retaining walls at Bear Road, Dyke Road Drive and Marine Parade.
The virtual meeting of the Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee is due to start at 4pm next Tuesday (19 January) and is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
They could of course get the i360 to pay the rent and interest that has been due since last year. But that would involve councillors doing something useful for a change. Sooo glad I have moved 😊
As predicted the huge loss of parking revenue from Madeira Drive, the A259 and the old town is going to be funded by the residents rather than tourists.
Of course it is. We are only here seemingly to serve as vehicles for wannabe politicians with rigid ideals and almost no ideas. We get to pay for all the things they screw up. All we really want is the streets clean, bins emptied, schools and libraries to work. Leave the politics to government. Vote for independent councillors
Ripping off residents again. Just how much have the council wasted on ridiculous projects across the city
This council are a disgrace, we are facing the worst financial crisis since WW2 and they are ignoring this. People are struggling to keep.rooves over their heads and food on the table.
The council’s greed disgusts me.
I need a car to clean houses in this city I earn minimum wage and my work has dried up. I get no benefits as I am forced to live off a small pension saved since I was 18.
Instead of punished drivers support us
How can you afford to run a car on minimum wage? I’m on more than that and I can’t afford a car.
“Better accessibility through a high turnover of vehicles being parked helps to support local businesses.”
Do they really think we residents are so gullible? Why don’t they admit that the high cost of parking is putting people off coming into B&H, and going elsewhere, while businesses are sinking lower and lower, or going bust? Each week brings yet more shops closing down. We ust have one of the most backward thinking councils in the country. Certainly it is one of the most incompetent,
Yes agree, less and less people are bothering.
Plus anyone can just park in The Drive on the pavement for free anyway.
Nobody does anything about it and it is on both sides of the road between Cromwell and Eaton roads. It is a free for all.
All that lost money the council is giving away.
Best not criticise the Council’s financial acumen – they may realise that the commercial rate for a parking space starts at £800 a year, which makes a resident’s permit look like a bargain.
The usual uncreative greens with their war on the driver nonsense. Why not build a park and ride & Why not encourage electric scooters if you want people to not drive, here is an idea, stop taxing the working class with a car park tax.
Another idea to make money and help the city, put some container style (but better looking) units in between the arches in madera drive, £100 a week to local start ups. 1 it would create jobs, 2 revenue, 3 tourism. So bored of hearing about how we need bike lanes and blablabla traffic. Build a park and ride and the issue is solved. I genuinely wish there was a center ground political party in this city with no dumb ideology who just understood the basics of economics, it’s not a lot to ask for.
Yes, let’s pretend that poor people don’t suffer from car dependency. Let’s pretend there is no toxic air. Let’s pretend there is no climate crisis. Let’s pretend there aren’t thousands of road deaths a year. Let’s pretend there is no noise pollution. Let’s pretend there’s no constant sense of danger. Let’s pretend there’s no waste of public space.
Let’s pretend!
Responding to the Drive proposal, the individual units is a good idea, there could be a ‘young’ and not so young Makers Mile of art and craft people, coffee shops, street food stalls, street performers, buskers etc, whatever is ‘cool’ and will draw in people to stroll up and down for its fun vibe. Special themed events. Think Camden Market, Venice Beach LA before the rents went up. A giant Saturday market boot fair along the lines of the one that was by the railway station so as to allow for all the car and bike events on a Sunday. From little acorns.
Funny isn’t it, they base the “parking permit” cost on CO2 emissions…. what are the CO2 emissions of a parked car…. zero.
We pay a tax for the emissions cars emit to the Govt, this council has no right to charge us again.
Have they not realised that it’s generally those who can’t afford to buy newer, less polluting vehicles that suffer the most from these increases, or is it that they simply don’t give two hoots and it’s all dogma?
I now pay just about 20% of the value of my car every year just to park it, if the council want to reduce my car emissions then they can feel free to buy me a less polluting one.
No? Thought not.
I even voted Green, never again, I’m fed up with huge increases by these greedy wasters every single year to see them waste money on vanity projects rather than sorting out graffiti problems, having a proper noise patrol for noisy neighbours, and keeping Brighton & Hove tidy, anyone remember the £100,000 or whatever they spent on the chewing gum steam street cleaning machine that they then sold for pennies years ago?
A useless, wasteful, vanity led council that does NOTHING but pamper their own ego’s.
Please Quit and do us all a favour.
Get rid of your car, Bob. Do yourself and your neighbours a favour.
People are dependent by cars. Maybe in the future this will change and then the council will surely find a way to tax you on your pet or on your roof. For the moment parking is the easiest way for them to give way to their money hunger and display utter incompetence and hypocrisy disguising the measure as a favour to the environment… Green extremists will consider this a good action for the sake of their city and for their children
Further large increases in the price of parking proposed for residents and businesses. There were also large increases in the price of all parking permits in this City last year.
-Further increase of 9% (well above the current inflation rate) for Residents Parking Permits.
– Further increase of 12.5% in Business permits.
Yet the greens have OPPOSED Park and ride schemes for years AND removed some parking places on the seafront, which has further reduced revenue to the Council. Not to mention the £40.2 of Public Money spent on the LOSS MAKING i360!
THIS WILL FURTHER HIT THE LOCAL ECONOMY.
I think they use parking as an (illegal) form of social cleansing.
No students, no short term residents, no foreigners. Why don’t they just say No Irish, no dogs no blacks and be done with?
A parking permit is a very small part of owning an automobile: the depeciation in its value after buying one; insurance; road tax; repairs; MOT; sets of tyres. And so on. Generally speaking, it makes better sense to join a car club, and set it all against tax.
An even weirder thing is when car drivers take it upon themselves to tell others about the route they took (“I came down through Romsey…”).
this is pure nonsense.
When I started a new position in October I joined up with the local car club.
The charges are astronomical. Fine if you want to pop to the supermarket with aunty Mabel for an hour (still cheaper to get an Uber there and back)
I looked at using the day hire rates for when I had to get to outerlying parts of my area.
Ridiculous charges.
ended up having to buy a car. A used car (somethng which I’ve never had to stoop so low to do unless it was one of my former classic cars).
Fortunately I have somewhwere else to park it that’s on private land, not mine, that’s only a ten minute walk from home.
I can’t get a business permit at the moment even though it’s a vehicle owned by the company because whilst the Business Permit Application is online, you have to send a cheque (remember them?) for payment.
A cheque? My business account doesn’t even have cheque facility, nor does my personal current account which I’ve had for over 30 years. But forward thinking BHCC say ‘While our offices are closed this is the only way you can pay for a business permit’. £6 MILLION of public money was spent/wasted on their’new website’ and they can’t even take a business payment for a bloody parking permit.
The whole lot needs disbanding.
Not fit for purpose.
The price of a parking permit should cover the cost of managing parking spaces and no more. It should not be a tax spent on whatever whim the council decides. How can we collectively protest against this today (other than by voting) – the council should serve us, the residents, not themselves.
The average car park space is 11.6 sq.metres of publicly owned land. The council could do many things with these spaces, create a new lane for buses, bicycles or cars, create a lovely community garden, make wider and beautiful footpaths, allow space for alfresco dining for businesses, pop-up markets etc. We forego all of those community benefits so that a tiny percentage of residents and tourists can rent this space for their private use. Of course it should be more than the cost price, it should be the opportunity cost to the community. I’m glad to see that they are directing funds into services for the disabled and elderly, so at least the community is benefiting in other ways.
Interesting point. I’m undecided though and once would have thought a person almost had a right to park outside of their own house say in a suburban neighbourhood (if they didn’t have a drive). Much like a lot of the single household terraces in Brighton. One house, one car space outside it. It used to be free but resident permits were voted in as a way of reserving the spaces for the residents. At that time it was suggested the price would simply cover the cost. I think the other benefits you refer to are usually covered by taxes. Apparently car ownership in the UK is approx 1.2 per household so not a tiny percentage. Still, food for thought.
My partner and myself work in the NHS on multiple sites. We need our cars to commute, there is no way we would be able to use public transport to get to work. I live in Hove to support my parents but it appears that we will need to move away as we can’t afford to buy nearby with off road parking. I doubt that the increased parking fees will improve the service that the council provide us. We were told that there were waits for our parking permits “due to covid” but a Freedom of Information request told me that all their workers were provided with the means to work from home. I’m afraid that I have very little faith in the Council; most of the positive things that have happened in the community recently have been facilitated by kind and enthusiastic volunteers. How on earth do they expect people to use public transport when it is cheaper to drive into Brighton and park than buy two day saver bus tickets?