Issue - meetings

A range of proposals affecting on street parking permits have been developed aimed to improve air quality through a major shift to mass transport, walking and cycling and incentives to reduce the use of more polluting vehicles in order to secure the safer movement of pedestrian traffic on the highway by reducing the public health risks posed to them by air pollution.  These proposals are also aimed to facilitate the achievement of strategic outcomes of local transport policy by reducing congestion and vehicle intrusion into neighbourhoods, and particularly residential neighbourhoods and align with the Council policy on Liveable Neighbourhoods.

Councillor Manda Rigby introduced the report by reading out the following statement:

‘I am very pleased to be proposing this motion to you today. My first task is to thank the officers for their very diligent work on this, especially Andy Dunn and Chris Major.

This is the first time in 8 years we have addressed on street parking permit charges. I’d like to take a bit of time saying what the drivers, see what I did there, for this change were.

Looking at residents parking permits, the cost has not increased for 8 years. In that time, cars have grown in size, the number of journeys has increased massively, people have become far more aware of the health and wellbeing impacts of a sedentary lifestyle and poor air quality...and we have declared a climate emergency. Owning and running a car is a very expensive endeavour, and we want to ensure when people are coming to the point that they need to replace their car, they are very aware of the other options which exist, so decide if they need the car or not....some absolutely will need a car, others may not. Part of the expense is the purchase of a parking permit, but in the scheme of overall costs, it is in some cases not as high as a full tank of petrol. We want people to look at not owning the most polluting vehicles as part of our overall Clean air programme, and so we are proposing an emission-based parking permit system.

The poorest in our society predominantly don’t own a car, or indeed have access to one, but they suffer the results of poor air quality caused by those who do. Those on lower incomes who do have a car are more likely to have an older one, with higher emissions, and we know how much many are suffering financially, so we have introduced a monthly and quarterly way of paying for our permits to spread the cost. As is common with most payment plans, we will pass on the 62p bank charge per transaction to those using the monthly option.

I’ll also look at hotel permits. We know, and have heard from speakers earlier, that our hospitality industry has really suffered this year. That’s why we as a council are trying to help by extending the Christmas market, and promoting the high street and Bath as a destination for people, whilst being as safe as we can be. However, we have to address the long-standing anomalies in hotel permit allocations.

It makes no sense for visitors to drive round and round our local streets looking for somewhere to park and for residents to do the same because they are in competition for scarce on road parking spaces. We are rebalancing this, so that locals can park closer to their homes, and visitors in the central area will need to park in a council car park. This brings us very much in line with many tourist destinations  ...  view the full minutes text for item 42