17 May 2024
There will be no U-turn over controversial plans to eliminate free parking bays across the district, the new leader of SADC has confirmed.
Free car parks in Redbourn, Park Street and London Colney, and one and two hour bays across Harpenden town centre will all incur charges later this year.
Although the initial cost of scrapping free parking bays and installing new signage is predicted to be in the region of £40K, fees would generate approximately £185K for 2024/25 and almost £268K in subsequent years. Charging for free car parks would bring in £14,300 for the next financial year, and £66K per annum going forwards.
Additionally, senior citizens parking permits will now be means-tested, so only pensioners on benefits are likely to qualify.
This is all revenue which has already been included in SADC’s budget for 2024-2025, alongside increases to the existing parking tariff structure which have already been introduced.
A consultation on the plans is due to commence next month, but council leader Cllr Paul de Kort said it was not a matter of whether they go ahead or not, it was a necessary evil to balance the budget.
Addressing the issue of senior citizens permits, he said: “Firstly I totally get it when somebody’s had something, and then they have it taken away. Even if you could step outside it and look from a helicopter and say ‘Well really was that right in the first place?’
“Senior citizens parking permits don’t exist anywhere else in the country and we’ve looked. They were only brought in we think about 10-12 years ago so they hadn’t existed before and now they’re going to be means-tested, they haven’t all been taken away. We’ve never known of a permit for a 45-year-old nursery assistant or any other low-paid worker helping the whole community. That’s never existed.
“I totally get why people are resistant to it and feel they’ve lost something and I’ll be absolutely clear that if we didn’t face the financial position we were in we wouldn’t be doing it.”
He elaborated on the importance of SADC keeping control over its finances: “The one thing worse than balancing the budget is definitely not balancing the budget, and that’s horrendous. You can see it with different councils – a 10 per cent increase in council tax in Birmingham, and the problems others have had – we would totally lose control over decision making.
“The car parks which the district council own are very valuable, but I tell you what is more valuable – more housing. Any plot of land in Harpenden and St Albans that you said you needed to get some money from, the most money you’ll get is to build more houses.
“So if we failed to balance the budget and lost control of the council, effectively we’d go into something like administration, and the administrator would look at ways to raise some money fast. They could then say, ‘Let’s sell those two car parks!’ People would say, ‘You can’t do that, what about parking?’ I’m sorry, your views would not count anymore, and that’s why we were determined that wasn’t going to happen on our watch.”
He confirmed that the proposals were definitely going to go ahead, despite opposition, because they had no other choice.
“There are three parts to parking increases this year, which add up to about a third of the total budget gap we’re making up. About a third has already happened, that’s parking charges going up above inflation. It’s not quite a third, but about 20-25 per cent is the senior citizens permit changes, and the rest is free parking bays being charged for.
“We don’t know, and that’s why there’s a consultation, exactly how it’s going to look, it isn’t a consultation on whether we’re going to do it or not because it’s in a budget and the only way the senior officers signed off on our budget was by us saying we’re going to raise some money from this activity.”
Harpenden retailers and opposition politicians alike have said scrapping free parking in the town will have a detrimental effect on trade, but Paul doesn’t agree.
“OK, cards on the table, I hear this is going to destroy the High Street, but I don’t buy it. I mean, put that in the context of I don’t want to do it because of what I’ve previously said, but if people say we’re going to ruin the High Street, I don’t see it.
“I can’t take seriously the politicians who put out a leaflet that said we are going to turn Harpenden into a wasteland like St Albans city centre. That was a gift to me, because I didn’t have to answer anything else in the leaflet when they put that out.
“When the level of hyperbole is so high you’ve got to say let’s take a reasonable view of this. So here’s the thing, I haven’t found any piece of research that says parking charges are a key deterrent to people going into town or city centres.
“Certainly there are two things that are far more influential in terms of transport, just in terms of transport.
“One is access, can you get there? How easy is it to get into the town centre? And then secondly, can you park?
“When I travel around the country, and and we book a restaurant or something in a place I don’t know, I say ‘Is there some parking somewhere?’ I don’t ask how much is it going to cost to park?
“If we were saying, we’re actually going to reduce the parking spaces because we’re going to put something else there, like houses, I would say that’s a much stronger position to say it would damage the High Street.
“On top of that, I’ve heard people say, ‘Well, okay, I’ll just go somewhere else where it’s free car parking’. I just don’t know where those places are you could drive to apart from Tesco in Hatfield, where it’s still free.
“Without getting too deep, I’ll talk a bit about free. I don’t think anything’s free. Milton Friedman famously said ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’, nothing’s really free.
“I’ve got a neighbour who rents out his driveway to commuters using an app. Nobody gets in touch with him and says, ‘Oh I see you’ve got a space on your driveway, we’d like to use it for nothing for the day, is that alright?’ and he then goes, ‘Yes, alright, come along’.
“Disabled bays are staying, there are loading bays already, and the thing we have to be careful about is the short-term pick-up and drop-off spaces as there are a nursery and a school in the town.
“I’m not dismissing the issue, but it’s overblown. I would welcome it if somebody could show me a piece of well-put together research on the High Street that says a council put up car park charges near a city centre and it blew the whole place up. That’s different from getting rid of all the parking spaces.”
So what do Harpenden residents think of the proposals?
Mary Tate, 79, says she objects to scrapping senior citizens parking permits as although house prices have gone up in the town, many locals are not actually wealthy.
“It’s ageist and discriminatory to take them away completely, and would be cheaper all round if they put up the cost of the permits to a level where it is viable for them to continue.
“If they scrap free parking altogether it will kill the small High Street businesses.
“An awful lot of people I know don’t have a smartphone so can’t park, some are applying for disabled badges now or driving out of town to places they can park for nothing.”
Marie Cvetkovic, who has lived in Harpenden for over 30 years, said: “I feel horrified and helpless about what the local council are trying to push through, for example, parking meters in the High Street? Really? Where will that start and end?
“We need to protect our Green Belt as the town is already oversubscribed on all levels. Hopefully a campaign will stop this madness to ruin our town and drive us out.
Nigel Gardner, Conservative prospective Parliamentary candidate for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, has been campaigning against the plans.
He said: “The means testing of pensioners’ parking permits is something with which I profoundly disagree.
“It is simply wrong that those who have worked all their lives and paid their taxes should have their parking permits taken away.
“My inbox has been full of messages from Harpenden’s senior citizens dismayed at this change.
“The axing of the permits comes as the council also plans to cut free on-street parking bays and hike parking tariffs – all in all this is terrible for our hard-working, hard-pressed High Street businesses.
“I’m calling on our Lib Dem colleagues to put our pensioners and high streets first and rethink these draconian changes – and I’m happy to work with them to come up with better proposals.”
