Council delays parking charges shake-up plan as protests mount

It is more than a year since East Riding Council outlined plans to introduce fees at 20 free car parks as part of an attempt to establish a uniform car parking policy for the first time in its history.

But the Car Parking Review Panel has yet to publish its final report after a series of delays since the scheme ran into massive public and political opposition and yesterday there were mixed messages coming from County Hall.

The council said it could not say when the report would be completed – but a member of the panel said it had already been done and had been put to senior officers.

A council spokeswoman said: "We are now working on a final report, which once finished will go to the relevant overview and scrutiny committee, but we don't know when that will be because it depends when the report is finalised."

The member said the final report, with senior officers' comments, would go before the next meeting of the Greater Prosperity Overview and Scrutiny Committee on March 4.

Panel chairman Coun Felicity Temple declined to comment on the progress of the review and referred inquires to the council's Press office.

"There's nothing I can tell you at the moment," she said.

But a source said he believed an alteration of the charges would be deferred because of the recession. "It's not in this year's budget, which it would have to be to pay for things like new equipment," he said.

"My best guess is that you won't see anything until after the 2011 council elections."

The initial proposals were to set an authority-wide car parking policy for the first time since the council was launched 13 years ago.

The plans – which would affect sites in Anlaby, Cottingham, Hedon, Hessle, Pocklington, Stamford Bridge and Willerby – would also see charging removed at 14 of the least-used car parks in the county.

But opposition to the plans by the East Riding's three MPs, the Federation of Small Businesses, and some town councils and residents, led to a three-month consultation exercise, while thousands of opponents signed a petition against the changes.

Conservative MPs David Davis, Greg Knight and Graham Stuart wrote a joint letter urging the council to abandon its plans, which they said could cause "severe damage" to the social fabric of local communities.

Other critics have questioned the financial sense of the changes, as the panel's own figures showed that although it was estimated the new charges would bring in an extra 347,852 a year, the cost of employing seven more wardens, buying new machines and vehicles, and paying for consultants to oversee the introduction of more controlled parking zones would cost 339,367 annually – with just 9,000 going into council coffers.

Last April Coun Temple said there appeared to be only three options to meet the 1.74m annual cost of car parking – residents paying through council tax; parish or town councils taking over the management of car parks, or individual users paying.

Liberal Democrat councillor Stephen Sloan said the architects of the plan should go back to the drawing board."The only people who are going to make money are the civilian contractors who will look after the collection and maintenance of the machines. It's a crazy idea.

"Places like Bridlington and Beverley you'd expect parking charges because that's the nature of the places they are.

"We spend all the money in these places so they have to expect to take some of the responsibility as well."