Nottingham City Council’s leaders say 10 years of Workplace Parking Levies in the city have brought a raft of benefits and played a key part in putting the brakes on congestion.
The council is singing the praises of the scheme – which makes bigger companies pay for their parking spots – just as neighbouring Leicester City Council scrapped its own plans to avoid burdening businesses with added expense during the cost of living crisis.
Nottingham is the only city in Europe with a WPL in place, with companies which have 11 parking spaces or more for employees, visitors, students or pupils paying £458 per space, per year. The council said 100 per cent of companies affected had paid their share.
As well as encouraging people to stop driving to work, money raised has helped improve the city’s transport network to an extent which, it says, hasn’t been possible in other parts of the UK.
The council said that since it was brought in in 2012 it has raised £90 million to put into public transport or travel improvements – including the city’s trams, Nottingham Station and the Linkbus network.
And while congestion has got worse, the council said it is not as bad as it might otherwise be, while CO2 emissions are also down, contributing to Nottingham’s ambition to become the first carbon neutral UK city by 2028.
Nottingham transport portfolio holder Coun Audra Wynter said the scheme had revolutionised how people travel around Nottingham and connected residents with jobs, education and healthcare.
The council said initial fears that businesses would choose to leave the city to avoid the charge did not play out, saying 2,600 new companies had been created there in the last decade and there was “no evidence” that any had left due to the WPL.
It added that both business growth and rising employment could partly be put down to the city’s low-cost, sustainable transport connections.
Coun Wynter said: “From a seedling of an idea that set out to tackle congestion growth in the city, the WPL has now transformed into a core part of the transport landscape in Nottingham.
“It has served as a catalyst for change, inspiring pioneering transport solutions and we’re proud of how our local businesses have risen to the challenge to affect change.
“The first of its kind in Europe, the scheme has raised almost £90 million, which has been re-invested into sustainable transport across the city. It has also allowed us to secure inward investment of over £1 billion in transport, as well as playing its part in the wider changing face of the city.
“It will contribute to Nottingham achieving carbon neutrality by 2028 and is now cited as part of the solution to tackle climate change by organisations such as Friends of the Earth and the Association for Public Service Excellence.
“We continue to speak to other cities who are increasingly interested in introducing a WPL scheme to share our knowledge, experience and expertise.”
A council spokeswoman said: “Nottingham has one of the highest levels of public transport use outside London, with over 40 per cent of journeys into the city centre made by public transport pre-pandemic – well above the national average.
“The city also has an increasingly ‘green’ taxi fleet, e-scooters and bikes for rent, segregated cycle lanes, a dedicated ultra-low emission vehicle lane, comprehensive real-time public transport information, nine park & ride sites, a new state-of-the-art central bus station, 18km of bus lanes, traffic light priority on all bus corridors and the council’s own fleet is over 50 per cent electric.”
