A major step towards scrapping free parking in the Liverpool city centre after 6pm has been taken - despite major opposition.
The city council’s cabinet has signed off on a plan for a statutory consultation on the proposals that it said will “standardise” parking across the city centre. The move is going ahead despite almost 90% of respondents being against any changes to the existing system in a public engagement exercise held before Christmas.
If the change is formally adopted, the city’s controlled parking zone (CPZ) would allow charges to be enforced from 7am to 11pm and increase by 10p per half hour, in a move the council said would raise £1.6m. Currently, 30 minutes parking costs £1.20, this would go up to £1.30. Up to an hour would increase to £2.50 from £2.40.
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Around 1,500 people responded to the initial non-statutory exercise before Christmas and as a result, it has been recommended plans for a two-hour maximum stay be shelved. Addressing the cabinet on Friday morning, Cllr Dan Barrington, cabinet member for climate change and environment, said the consultation and potential shift would “focus to deliver an efficient controlled parking zone.”
Cllr Barrington added how a new system would “support better enforcement of traffic management” and “standardise” parking across the city centre, with benefits such as improved air quality and reduced congestion. The cabinet papers acknowledged the move would not prove popular, with council officers admitting “support for these proposals was not expected, given the controversial nature of the changes being proposed.”
Ahead of the meeting, Joanne Anderson, Mayor of Liverpool, said the city centre had gone through an “amazing transformation” since the introduction of the controlled parking zone in 1995 but now more than 35,000 residents were calling it home.
She said to not address parking challenges would be “foolhardy” and a “process that should have been addressed some time ago.” It is expected, subject to the decision not being called in, the full consultation will go live some time next month.
The cabinet has also signed off on plans for temporary cycle lanes installed during the covid-19 pandemic to become permanent. In Spring 2020, lanes were set up on three routes including Vauxhall Road, West Derby Road, and Sefton Park to the City Centre. They are now in a poor state of repair and have been deemed unfit for purpose.
Following a public consultation on the schemes, Liverpool Council’s cabinet is expected to adopt the routes permanently at Sefton Park and West Derby Road. An additional public engagement exercise has been launched for the wider Liverpool Loop Line, which incorporates Vauxhall Road.
Despite concerns the programme would reduce traffic lanes along West Derby Road, the local authority said the current number of lanes would not be impacted. A report to the city council cabinet in October last year said initially the pop-up schemes were never intended to be permanent highway measures, but rather a “relatively low cost and rapid method of implementing segregated cycle schemes over long lengths to encourage cycling as a result of the pandemic.”
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