Many of you will have seen information on social media about the potential introduction of a charge for parking in the Rocfort Road car park.
At this stage, it is important to emphasise that TMBC (the car park owner) are not even at a consultation stage yet. There was originally a proposal to have a consultation now, but this was postponed after the intervention of myself and Cllr Sue Bell who pointed out that the knock on effect on parking in the centre of the town, and in particular along Malling Road, could be considerable.
Therefore, we have persuaded TMBC to do a review of parking in the town to identify potential additional spaces and to see if all of the current road restrictions are required. There will also be an opportunity for people to request a residents parking scheme, if they want one.
There is also an obvious need to make sure that the car park is not abused by people who park there all day (such as commuters and some SE Water employees) and reduce the number of spaces available for visitors and residents.
Whatever happens, it is clear that something needs to be done as the car park is not serving the community. When I took some time to observe the car movements on a mid-week morning recently, during the 45 minutes that I was there, not a single car left the car park. It was absolutely full and there were 14 cars that arrived who were unable to park. This cannot be good for local businesses who need a turnover of spaces so that their customers can park without having to drive round in circles.
The consultation on charging is not likely to happen until June (at the earliest), but when the consultation goes live, I am happy to host a public meeting so that residents can make their views known.
The cost of running the car park is considerable (about £23,000 per year) which is made up of business rates, maintenance, CCTV monitoring, Civil Enforcement Officer salaries and other administrative costs. Whilst the motivation behind the idea to introduce a charge is not primarily financial (but about managing the parking to achieve a turnover of spaces), the council does have a duty to ensure that the charges for the services it provides are made fairly on a borough-wide basis. Car parks are one such service to which this applies. Under the law, the council has no duty to provide car parking spaces, but it does have the power to do so where it will benefit communities’ local economy.
The Council owns many car parks across the Borough, and most of them attract a fee for their use. Therefore, TMBC does have to be mindful that the running costs of car parks where there is a charge are paid for by the users of that car park. We have to consider whether it is fair for those users to pay for their own car parks AND to subsidise (through their council tax) free parking in other areas of the Borough. Likewise, is it fair for public transport users to subsidise free car parking?
In 2017, TMBC corrected the long-standing unfairness of Snodland residents paying for services in Tonbridge that would normally be carried out by a Parish or Town Council. However, as Tonbridge has no Town Council, it fell to TMBC to pay for those services. This was stopped when Tonbridge residents were asked to pay “Special Expenses” for Tonbridge local services in the same way Snodland residents pay a separate Council Tax charge to Snodland Town Council. However, having done this, Tonbridge residents are now quite rightly pointing out that the boot is on the other foot in regard to car parks!
When TMBC introduced car parking charges in West Malling, there was lot of public opposition and residents were concerned that it would cause local businesses to fold. That has proved not to be the case and the town centre is as thriving as ever, with shop vacancy rates at 3%, compared to 11% nationally. My personal view is that a small charge will not drive people away to other towns; this hasn’t happened in other places. The convenience of shopping in your local village outweighs the time spent in travelling elsewhere. Additionally, it would cost more in petrol to drive to another town to find the same services than it would to simply pay the 20p for half an hour parking (that’s just an indicative figure).
Ultimately, there are no easy solutions to this problem, but when the consultation begins, we do want to hear your views!
Councillor David Lettington
