Council chief defends car parking charges

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporting Service

Car parking charges don’t put people off from visiting town centres, a Powys council chief has claimed.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Economy, Residents and Communities scrutiny committee, car parking charges were discussed as councillors examined the impact of cuts and savings made by some council departments last year that fall under their remit.

This included the Highways, Transport and Recycling department which had made £1.53 million in savings during 2024/2025.

This was part of an overall council expectation to make £12.9 million in cuts and savings last year.

The report shows that the department had made just over £317,000 during the year from the increased car parking fees which had contributed to the department’s overall savings.

But following a review which had been pushed for by opposition councillors who claimed the price hike was putting off people shopping in towns, new car parking arrangements – including the reintroduction of the one-hour parking charge in long-stay car parks – were introduced in August.

As a consequence of this, the report shows that £75,490 of income that would have been made by the 2023 car parking fees has been written off.

This money would have been used as a saving to offset losses in other parts of the department.

Cllr Peter James (Powys Independents – Llanwrtyd Wells) asked: “Is there any analysis of seeing to how people are changing to shop out of county because of lower parking charges (there)?”

He wanted to know if the council had done any research to find out if businesses had been affected by last year’s car parking fees.

Head of Highways Transport and Recycling, John Forsey, said that academics from Aberystwyth University had helped conduct the car parking review as they are “well versed” on this area of research.

Mr Forsey said: “From the research there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between footfall on the high street and car parking charges.

“It's more around the offer rather than the thought of paying.”

Using himself as an example, Mr Forsey continued: “If I want to go away for the day, I don’t necessarily think I’m not going to go to Aberystwyth because it’s going to cost me £4 to park there.

“I tend to go because I like the seaside, and that’s the kind of thing the research is suggesting.”

He said that it is only a “perception” that car parking fees put off people from visiting town centres and that further research from the Welsh Government had also found that this was not the case.

Mr Forsey said: “Where we have neighbouring authorities with a different fee structure to ours, it’s used as a mechanism to justify lower footfall.

“When perhaps people’s shopping habits have just changed where we tend to buy more stuff online and places such as Shrewsbury or Merthyr (Tydfil) have become more of a shopping destination.”

He added that the department had to find “that balance” of generating an income for the council.

Cllr Pete Lewington suggested that the report also needs to include the financial information on areas of the council that have “overachieved” by making more money than expected, such as car parks.

Cllr Lewington (Conservative – Newtown West) said: “We’re only getting one side of the picture.”

The committee agreed that this will be a recommendation to put to Cabinet.