Cabinet members yesterday approved a number of changes to the city’s parking fees and arrangements to help meet significant budget challenges while continuing to deliver service improvements.
The proposals aim to maintain the income needed to continue delivering key parking services in spite of increasing costs, as well as make charges more consistent and improve the overall customer experience.
They include:
- increases to pay and display fees both on and off-street, bringing them more in line with those charged by other councils (most of whom are carrying out similar reviews)
- increases to fees for permits, to cover the increased costs of maintaining permit schemes (with any surplus going towards road maintenance)
- charges for all motor vehicles in car parks, including motorcyles, so that anyone who uses a bay must pay for it (with a view to also rolling this out to on-street parking bays, once they all use ticketless payments)
- replacement and upgrade of on-street payment systems to provide a wider choice of options (credit/debit/contactless cards, Android, Apple, RingGo app, phone and website). Cash payments will be removed, as they have been in our car parks for six years, reducing the costs and carbon footprint of collecting, transporting and processing cash. In 2024/25 over 84 per cent of customers chose to pay by RingGo and only three per cent of payments were made by cash
- charges for blue badge parking on the Hoe promenade, to cover our costs and help ensure we can continue to provide this service (including enforcement) in the longer term
- modest charges at all our coastal car parks (Jennycliff, Mount Batten and Strand Street) for stays of over one hour. Charges will be lower than at most other coastal/seafront car parks in Plymouth and the rest of Devon and Cornwall
A proposal to introduce an escalating increase of 50 per cent for each additional residential parking permit (where people have more than one vehicle) was withdrawn in response to public feedback.
Councillor John Stephens, Cabinet Member for Strategic Planning and Transport, said: “We have been making a number of improvements to support motorists and businesses over the last year, for example by providing more wide bays, enhancing car park security and extending parking times.
“As well as providing ‘traditional’ parking services, our team also works with public transport colleagues and partners to promote and encourage sustainable travel, such as enforcing bus lane and bus stop restrictions. This annual review will also enable us to continue strengthening our capacity to enforce inconsiderate parking around schools that breaches restrictions and increases risk to the safety of children and young people.
“However, like most other local authorities, we are facing significant financial challenges due to rising costs and demand and that means having to keep all our charges under review.
“Benchmarking against 26 other cities shows that our on-street and off-street charges are significantly lower. These changes are essential if we are to balance fairness, financial sustainability and the high-quality service our customers deserve.”
Notices of variation on some of the proposals will be published shortly and changes implemented in mid-April. Proposals to introduce charges at coastal car parks and for blue badge parking on the Hoe promenade are subject to a public consultation. These are expected to be advertised this month but no changes will be implemented until after the local election in May.
