Bid to save free Christmas parking fails in Stafford as budget passed

In previous years Stafford Borough Council has waived parking charges on Saturdays before Christmas – and last month visitors were able to use the authority’s car parks for free from 1pm on December 17 and 24.

But the festive bonus faces the axe this year as part of proposed savings to help the council balance its books. The cut, expected to save £15,000 a year, was branded a “Scrooge”-like action and met with a response of “Bah humbug” at a meeting earlier this month.

On Tuesday (January 24) Councillor Ralph Cooke called for the Christmas parking concession to stay. He said: “It’s not a good look is it?

“But I have a solution to this. I would like to make an amendment to the budget that the sum for concessionary parking not be removed from the 2023/24 budget and that the £15,000 cost be taken from the £25,000 which was to have been transferred to balances in 2022/23.

“Why not give the residents of the borough a Christmas present? The cost of living crisis is not going to evaporate unfortunately, it will come back next winter when fuel prices start rising again.

“They could do with a bit of help and I’m sure the traders could do with a bit of help. The concessionary parking will help people come into town to do their shopping and that will be good for traders.

“It’s a win for consumers, a win for traders and it will also be a win for this council because people will think more positively about the council. And you can still put £10,000 into balances, but we’ve got millions in reserves so we should be OK for a bob or two.”

But his proposal failed to gain enough support from fellow councillors and was not passed. Residents will face a 1.9% rise in the tax they pay for services provided by Stafford Borough Council from April.

The proposed increase for 2023/24 means residents in Band D properties will see the tax they pay for bin collections, parks and other borough council services go up by around 6p a week, or £3.14 for the year, from £165.38 to £168.52. The budget was formally approved by the full council on Tuesday.

Councillor Mike Smith, cabinet member for resources, said that despite inflation currently running at more than 10%, the authority has decided to increase some charges by 5% and freeze others, such as car parking. The authority has also taken the decision not to increase council tax by 2.9%, despite being permitted to do so by Government, as the rising cost of living has made the council reluctant to impose a larger tax rise.

He told Tuesday’s meeting: “A few days before Christmas we received a Government settlement which contained some good news for local government, in that the business rates reset has been postponed yet again. We know that because of Stafford’s success in attracting new business in recent years that would be more damaging to us than to many other local authorities because they have had a much poorer record of attracting new business.

“At the same time our New Homes Bonus has been calculated to give us more than we expected. And while we know inflation is bad, the one plus is that interest rates have increased and we have had more investment income than was predicted.

“Despite identifying £876,000 worth of savings, we predicted a deficit of around £900,000 for the forthcoming year. The Government has made two new substantial grants which are one-offs; a funding guarantee of £1.594m and a core spending grant of £110,000.

“These two grants have virtually eliminated the deficit of £900k. Also they have enabled us to set up a new reserve so that the borrowing requirement to support the Future High Streets project is removed.

“That said, the identified savings are still required, fully justifying the act we’ve taken to deliver more shared services. That action takes up half the savings.”