Paying to Use Works Car Park?
Posted by Jonathan Elder
Motorists could find themselves paying £250 a year to park in parking spaces owned by their employers as local authorities consider a new tax on company car parks.
Nottingham: Robbing from the poor to give to the transport department
Plans for The Workplace Parking Levy is moving ahead, despite the new Government’s transport secretary Philip Hammond promising to end the ‘war on motorists’. Nottingham will be the first city to introduce the scheme, with businesses charged £253 per space from 2012, rising to £301 by 2014. It only applies to companies with 11 or more parking spaces, which is said to be around 15 percent of the employers in the city. There are exemptions for some business types, such as doctors surgeries.
The council say that all money will be used to improve the transport links in and out of Nottingham, with two more tram links set to be introduced and the main train station also due for a redevelopment.
It is up to individual employers to decide whether to pass the costs on to employees. Jane Urquhart of Nottingham City Council said: “If your employer is liable it is their decision whether to pass the levy (about £1 per day to begin with) onto employees.” However, even if the costs are not directly passed to employees, it is likely to be taken into consideration when deciding pay rates for new employees and pay rises for the existing staff.
Other cities have also considered similar schemes, with an investigation by The Telegraph showing that councils in Bristol, York, Devon, Hampshire, Leeds, Bournemouth, South Somerset and Wiltshire have all look at introducing the charge.
Most are thought to be waiting to see how the Parking Levy works in Nottingham, with Leeds officials saying it is viewed as an “important consideration in formulating a long-term strategy”.
A spokesman for Nottingham admitted that: “Reaction from businesses has been negative as you would expect.”
“It is the wrong tax in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said David Frost, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce. “This is the worst possible time for it to be introduced as we are trying to get businesses to grow all over the country.”
