They call this listening?

[Coffee]

The issue is that the council makes a surplus from the car park without any of the changes. It doesn't cost them anything, it makes a profit. So maybe the council should just take a car park that makes a profit for them already and serves the best interests of shoppers, retailers, a medical centre and local residents in terms of on street parking and bloody well leave it alone. 

 

The losses the council makes on parking aren't here. So by your reckoning, it is the people the council currently subsidises that should pay to cover the deficit in costs. So that would be council staff, councillors and residents in those parts of town that have loss-making on-street parking schemes.  

 

Asked this before, how can the car park make a profit from free car parking?

 

As for the residents loss making schemes which ones are loss making and in what why are they making a loss?

[grey_man]

It's not free. The argument is about removing or reducing the free time before charges apply. The problem with what the council is trying to do is that it is trying to change something that works, that nobody has a problem with and makes it money and replace it with something that doesn't work and actually goes against its stated objectives from the local strategy document. They are insane.

 

As for the loss making schemes, it is all laid out in the parking strategy docs on the council website. I assume the major cost of the resident schemes is administration. Personally, I think those sorts of things shouldn't expect to make a surplus. I also think the parking for council employees should be seen as an operational cost for the organisation.

 

The council's mistake in my opinion is to start from the point of view that the parking function overall should run at a profit. Once you start from that and work backwards, you inevitably end up doing something stupid. If you set the wrong objectives to begin with, the results will always be wrong. What they're now doing is rather than admit they made a bad decision, are compounding their stupidity by trying to find a 'compromise' that is exactly the same as the first stupid thing they did. It's amazing watching them tie themselves up in knots rather than simply admit they got something wrong.     

[Bazj]

If  council employees get free or subsidised parking; it should be taxed as a benefit in kind.