Safe Speed Forums

I see that Nottingham Council are planning to introduce the workplace parking charge. They would be the first council to attempt this. They are looking at £185 p.a. in 2010 rising to £300 in 2012.

As an employer with a factory and car parking who might be affected in future if charging spreads, I am undecided as to what to do. The intention of the charge is to encourage workers to use public transport and reduce congestion. If the firm is charged via the business rates and doesn't pass the charge onto employees then it will have no effect. If the firm bills its staff then:

- they will park off site and wreck the surrounding area (like hospitals).
- some smart guy will start a minibus service from a local bomb site (same number of cars on the road except for the last few yards).
- the staff will want a pay rise to compensate for the lost benefit (after tax).
- staff morale will be hit.

Can I apply to build another factory on my car park or do planning regulations require a certain minimum of spaces per square foot?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

You can bet your arse Nottingham Council Employees will either be exempt or renumerated.

ehhhht. The intention of the charge is to fleece motorists for yet more money, the disingenuous public justification is congestion and polar bears etc.

£185 is £3.50 a week, collectively a nice windfall for LA's, but not enough in itself to make someone change their commuting habits.

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Perhaps he should say:

why, have they lost count of the number of employees they have?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/renumerate

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

Get all the local businesses together that will be affected. Talk to a journo from the local paper to say that you are all thinking of getting out of nottingham and relocating due to their suggestion of charging employees to park at their place of work. You say that you are fed up with people being taxed to death just to earn a living. If enough businesses say the same then they will back down.

Alternatively introduce a paid permit scheme for your employees so it costs them a small amount a year to park. I think then it will be exempt if you already charge them but I don't know what the minimum is.

No it won't, bollock-squeezing fuel charges haven't done that, so nor will car parking charges. It may make a few glance at the bus timetables and realise that the patchy and feeble system they will be expected to use has no hope of getting them to and from work in any realistic timeframe or without numerous changes of service.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Especially when I'd be surprised if it cost less than an extra £185 a year to use public transport.

I suppose it could be argued that giving any employee a parking space is effectively a tax free perk anyway. It could also be considered unfair on those who choose not to commute by single occupancy car in that they are missing out on this perk. I'll try and dig out the stats, but I believe the cost of actually providing a parking space for an employee is somewhere around £3 a day anyway!

I would imagine that Nottingham, being quite a large town (or is it a city?) would have relatively good public transport links, so (and I appreciate I'm speculating wildly here) it could be the case that a significant number of those who do currently commute in a single occupancy car have other options available to them. Of course a decent Travel Plan to actually provide information and incentives would be a damn good idea to run in conjunction with the tax-parking-space scheme.

http://www.thetram.net/

Seems they have a very good PT system, with another guided tram to be built.
In any case, with fuel soon to be £1.50/litre (diesel at £1.27 NOW where I live (dearest)) it may be the cheapest way to travel. In fact, if car-parking charges are factored in it may well be cheaper to use PT within a city/town than your car.

I think it was the green [with envy] party that calculated the cost of providing car parking space at something like a couple of billion a year, and consider it a hidden subsidy.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

The college I work at is doing a major building project at the moment which means the staff car park will be closed for least for a year or two, the main car park was made staff only and students have been encouraged to use public transport. The college has received numerous complaints from local residents, letters of complaint have also gone to the council and local newspapers concerning the way students are parking. Disabled (or is that differently abled now?) students, students living more than 25 miles away or have provably no PT provision can still get car park access.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

If you would be "allowed" 10 parking places then write "no parking" on all of the other ones. Then you haven't provided parking spaces. If anyone chooses to park there, well that's up to them.

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Andrew.

I'm amazed they suggested such a blatant tax grab in the current climate.

If I drive to work because I have no alternative then......guess what??? I have no alternative I'm quite sure that my £180pa isn't going to provide a dedicated tram to pick me up and ferry me in! In fact all the £180's together isn't going to pay from a tram route but it'll still add up to a nice sum to subsidise some other wasteful aspect of council expenditure.

They've taxed us by stealth until its overflowing and now they've spunked all the money they're desperate for even more things to tax.

Given that the journey (regardless of mode of transport) is essentual and business related, how is a parking space a tax free perk?
Sometimes I have to pay the meter, or buy permissions to park for my van, these are tax deductable expenses.


And it's unfair that some people get a desk by the window, and it's unfair that the floor upstairs have a better coffee machine, etc etc etc. Life isn't "fair", concentrate on the things that matter. Sometimes it seems we're a nation of people jealous of others for having things we ourselves don't need or want.



Perfect public transport will never exist, and right now it's often not evan adequate. London has a great deal of public transport, so it's fair to make the sweeping generalisation that those who live here and work in an office shouldn't drive at all right? but heres two examples:

My flatmate is PA for someone tremendously important. She often works 14-16 hour days, and uses her car to ferry clients about, and can you blame her for not wanting to share public transport with drunks and bums after a long hard day?

Someone else I know lives in muswell hill and works in swiss cottage. thats sub-15 mins by car, sub-£10 of fuel per week, or 1hr+ on several busses or trains, and about £25+ for a pass.

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

OK.

How is this going to work in practice?

The company is billed by the local council. The bosses, wanting to be green and socially responsible, write to all their staff saying "If you want a parking space it will cost you £X p.a." All the spaces are soon rented by staff.

At great expense, the company employs a car park warden to police the scheme and an administrator to issue the permits etc. They proudly show all this to the specially hired council inspector when he comes round to check compliance.

The next day, Fred turns up and a visitor has parked in "his" space. Now, when it was a free-for-all he didn't care but now ... he is furious.

Tom is a keen cyclist but rents a parking space for the three days per week he uses the car. Does he pay 3/5ths of the rent? He is very green, after all.

Well, you see what I'm getting at - it's a nightmare.

All that will actually happen is that companies will pay the extra tax and pass it on to customers as increased prices. Staff will be unaffected. Cars will not be discouraged. Nobody will care.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

One client I worked at realised that PT in the area was a joke, however the industrial estate they were based at was busy, there was laways a que to get out of the car park.

THier idea introduce a car pool scheme where if you had at least one other employee in the car with you, you got to park in the allocated parking right next to the exit thus less queing to go home.

It did cause a drop in the amount of cars in thier car park, initially there was a fuss from employees, however, after about six months the comments started to be more and more in favour.

And even better, no money going to the LA!

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

Trouble is - would the council listen .Look at the shouting over the 10p tax farce -was only when MPs rebelled that something was done .Likewise -enough councillors have to decide that enough is (or one brave and consientious enough to stand up and be counted)- but looking at locally -Labour getting a trouncing by the Tories ,and BMP getting in in what was Labour stronghoods -talk about lemmings heading for a cliff.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Its not only a nightmare, its completely and utterly bloody stupid!

What constitutes a parking space? A tarmaced area with marked bays? A patch of rough ground within the land owned by the business that can accomodate 15 or 20 cars depending on how altruistically everyone parks? The grass verge outsides the building?

And besides, a business that provides its employees with parking spaces means that those vehicles are kept out of the way during the day. Make folks pay for that 'perk' and you'll displace many of those vehicles onto the nearby roadsides, kerbs, verges, outside folks houses, other businesses etc etc etc. And surely this is just the sort of thing they should be discouraging because it obstructs the commerce for the local area.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

And, how long before they start charging us for parking at home. A privilege to have your own off road parking.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.