Autocar - First for car news and reviews

Nottingham council’s plan to impose a Workplace Parking Levy (WPL), effectively charging businesses an annual fee for each parking space on their premises, could face legal action. The proposed WPL, commencing in 2010, seeks to tax businesses with 10 or more car parking spaces at £185 per bay per year.
The idea has already met with stiff opposition from some of Nottingham’s larger employers; the Boots chemists’ group, for example, would face an annual bill beyond £800,000.
It’s feared that...Read the full article

Never. Going. To. Work. Seriously, if I had an office with 20spaces for employees and were to be taxed £185pa I'd just open the car park to public parking at, say, £185per day or permit parking... where permits cost £1 a year and are available from Doris in the HR department.

This doesn't surprise me one bit.  I used to live in Nottingham and even 7 years ago they were severely restricting the number of car parking spaces that businesses were allowed to build alongside new premises.  I know there are EU directives to follow but they appear to be going beyond the scope of these.  Nottingham City Council really are a car hating council and I bet they would kill to be the next city with a congestion charge.  All the road systems in Nottingham appeared to be designed to cause congestion, not ease it, presumable with the aim of discouraging people from using cars.

The powers that be need to wake up and realise that the ability of people to use their own personal transport and the increased mobility it gives is one of the reasons we have such a strong economy.  If they want to go back to the dark ages when nobody ventured outside a mile radius of their home then go ahead ban the car like all these narrow minded eco-weenies want to do.

It wouldn't have bothered me but the public transport in place along with everywhere else was totally inadequate.  It would have turned my 10 minute commute by car into an hour long ordeal getting the bus into the city centre and then back out towards work.  Last time I was in Nottingham (about 3 weeks ago) I went to use the bus and you had to use the correct money because the bus drivers do not have access to the cash to give you change.  How is not giving change making it easier for people to use public transport?

This is of no suprise, under the Labour governemnt taxes like these have become very acceptable. There is of course no benefit from them apart from the local council making money off the back of the cash cow motorists to provide them with more budget as they have probably overspent.

Increasing council tax is probably not possible due to the caps so they have to look at alternatives to up thier overspent budget, this is normally motorists and is normally introduced on the back of some environmental smoke screen reason, which when examined is not logical.

 

 

Autocar:

The idea has already met with stiff opposition from some of Nottingham’s larger employers; the Boots chemists’ group, for example, would face an annual bill beyond £800,000.

Yet another way to tax the motorist. Don't councils like this realise that all they will do is frighten away businesses to other area or, in the case of large companies like Boots who are already foreign owned, abroad, thus losing jobs with all the extra costs for the council that that implies, whether direct or indirect. I wonder whether they will apply it to their own employees as well ? My local county council has a half of one of the towns multi-storey car parks reserved for their employees, and whilst we all queue to find spaces on busy days their car park appears half empty most of the time.

I used to visit Nottingham regularly 2 years ago. It had more speed cameras and mean average speed zones than a Speed Camera factory. Apparently you need 4 deaths to justify a camera installation. Well Nottingham I can only presume must have had Kamikazee pedestrians jumping onto roads on every single main road into town!

This tax on businesses private property has one simple impact. It raises costs - which drives down demand. Businesses providing parking to allow customers to spend money or staff to do some productive work will be forced to plant over their places and leave customers and staff to make their way on buses which is a transport system this country despensed with well over 50 years ago because it's woefully inefficient and time consuming compared to the car.

I don't know what planet Nottingham Councillers are on! Clearly a rise in bus passangers would be hailed by Government as the great green revolution working and "rise in popularity".

It might be described in other quarters (more realistically and considerably more honestly) as the corruption of Government by heavily subsidised (begging bowl) Bus companies. We should be demanding an end to the motorists subsidising of this bankrupt public (private Co's) transport system. Throw out these anti-car parasites. 

Could the car park just not have bays, and therefore a indeterminate number of "spaces". If not, then go further and paint some tennis courts in, and it would cease to be a car park, but instead is a tennis court that workers happen to park on...