Hammersmith & Fulham (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Hammersmith & Fulham Council leader admits a “mistake” in handling parking permit charges and says a review is under consideration amid mounting public concern.
Following concerns regarding the magnitude of the recent price hikes and the associated procedure, Cllr. Stephen Cowan, Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, provided the assurance.
The new fees were the first increase in the West London borough since 2012 and were approved by the council’s Cabinet last October before being implemented in February. The increases, according to the Labour-run local government, were intended to deter people from operating vehicles with higher emissions.
A diesel cost and an additional fee for second vehicles were incorporated into the proposals, which resulted in the relocation of resident parking permits to an emissions-based charging model. Electric vehicle (EV) permits also cost for the first time.
For cars that produced 75g/km of CO2 or less, resident permits were either £119 per year or £60 under the old arrangement.
While EVs were free, second-hand cars had a set price of £497. Depending on the emissions generated, the new model’s annual fees range from £125 to £340. Secondhand cars and diesel are more expensive.
Stefan du Maurier created a petition on the council’s website and Change.org after the charges were put into effect. The petition enumerated two main demands: that parking permits be lowered to reflect inflation, which according to a Bank of England calculator in December would have been £167.93 based on the £119 amount introduced in 2012; and that specific requirements be fulfilled prior to the implementation of any additional pricing structures.
These included establishing an “independent body of residents” to co-approve any questions in the consultation and requiring a minimum of 250 responses, with over 51% of respondents supporting any future changes. The petition was reviewed by senior council members at Monday night’s meeting (July 14) because it had 467 signatures on the council’s website, which was more than the 250 required for it to be presented to Cabinet.
Officers had already written a report in response to the petition, outlining the history of the billing scheme’s adoption, the efforts made to inform the public about the changes, and the reasoning behind them.
On the petition’s request to set the cost of permits at a single rate of £167.93, officers wrote this would be
“incompatible with the policy change requirement to tackle dangerous air quality in Hammersmith & Fulham by encouraging residents and businesses to change to lower-emitting vehicles.”
“The emissions-based charge model which was proposed and subsequently implemented has been successful in other London boroughs, ensuring those with higher polluting vehicles pay more,”
they continued.
“This proposal will lead to changes in vehicle usage, ownership and behaviour, and to an increase in the use of greener transport alternatives, such as cycling and walking within the borough.
A single banded system would not create the deterrent required for change and would not support the Council’s 2030 Net Zero strategy.”
Additionally, officers reaffirmed that permit fees have been suspended since 2012, that the 2,472 residents who hold Disabled Blue Badge permits are unaffected by the changes, and that new 12-month, six-month, and rolling monthly permits will facilitate payments.
The findings of a 2023 borough-wide parking census were also highlighted, as 49.18% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed with the statement that fees should be implemented to cut down on the number of more polluting vehicles.
“This is a standard format question routinely used in consultations, which shows significant support for the principle that has been applied of using parking charges to reduce the number of higher polluting vehicles in the borough,” officers wrote.
Tom Holloway, a resident who has backed Mr. du Maurier’s petition, expressed his concerns to Cabinet members on the new rates’ predetermined level as well as what he called “leading” questions during the consultation.
He added that he thought the Hammersmith & Fulham council needed to consider enacting more “positive” green policies, citing initiatives like encouraging people to switch to electric cars as examples.
“I believe your residents are thus asking for easy and honest engagement, to be helped to be greener by making it more affordable,”
he said.
“I understand that they want green policies that do not control their freedom of movement and disproportionately punish small local businesses and lower income families.”
Among the many questions Cllr. Cowan posed to Mr. Holloway was what he would have done differently regarding the consultation and the revised pricing. According to Mr. Holloway, he would have considered implementing a more “balanced cost,” accounting for lower-income families with small children and necessary work vehicles.
Cllr Cowan drew attention to the costs having not risen since 2012, telling attendees:
“I think we made a mistake in deciding to freeze the parking charges. We should have put them up by inflation every year and made adjustments as the environmental agenda changed, because I think it was quite a difference for people when they came in and I think it looked like we’d hiked them up a lot.”
He claimed that he and his colleagues had witnessed the previous Conservative government raise parking fees while in opposition, so when Labour took office in 2014, they decided that freezing the fees would be the best course of action.
On the costs, Cllr Cowan said:
“We spent a lot of time looking at those different prices and we may have gotten some things wrong. It’s very hard to work out if we do this, what will that do with this category of car? Can we encourage this?
We always look at things again and I will certainly go away and consider some of your comments and talk to my colleagues in the Cabinet about that,”
he said to Mr Holloway.
“I can give you that assurance.”
In the upcoming months, Cllr. Cowan stated, the local government will communicate with Mr. Holloway through the appropriate Cabinet member, Cllr. Florian Chevoppe-Verdier.
In recent years, a number of other London authorities, such as Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, have put emissions-based parking schemes into place. In the meantime, the City of London Corporation approved comparable fees for its own parking lots.
What prompted the council leader to admit a ‘mistake’ over parking permit charges?
The public outcry and protests against the new emissions-based permit pricing scheme, which increased fees for residents, including charging for previously free permits for electric vehicles, were the main cause of the council leader’s admission of the “mistake” over parking permit charges.
In addition to a 50% fuel tax and higher fees for second vehicles, the fee increases, which were occasionally significant, generated hundreds of petition signatures and general discontent among the populace, who demanded more equitable pricing and improved consultation.
The council leader was forced to admit the mistake and take into consideration a review of the permit pricing structure in order to allay residents’ worries and increase decision-making transparency because of the strong opposition and worries that the pricing was being used more as a revenue tool than for traffic management.