Council car parks where charges were set to be introduced will remain free after a last minute u-turn.
Rother District Council was planning to start charging at car parks in Beeching Close; Sidley; The Gorses; Richmond Road; Broad Oak Park; Little Common Rec; The Polegrove/Rye Salts; Northiam; Sedlescombe; and Hurst Green.
Charges were also set to be introduced at Bexhill Leisure Centre, as well as at the coach and lorry parking in Wainwright Road and the coach parking in Battle.
But yesterday, the council’s cabinet voted to abandon the plans.
The cabinet heard from the chair of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee, which had recommended the charges be scrapped.
Paul Osborne (Con) said: “There was so much negative comment from residents, especially in Northiam and Sidley … [compared to] the potential tiny amount of income.
“We thought the negative publicity and the harm to the reputation of the council wasn’t worth the aggravation.”
Cllr Christine Bayliss, cabinet member for regeneration and economic development, put forward a motion for the charges be dropped.
She said: “I think we’ve listened to the consultation, we’ve listened to the public. As the economic development lead on the cabinet, I have been lobbied by businesses in places like Sidley, for example, and you can see that this would be, at this stage, a backward step.”
But this view was not shared by Liberal Democrat cabinet member Kathryn Field.
Cllr Field said: “I think there are equalities issues here. I think we should be charging for all of them or not charging for any of them; I don’t think we should be cherry picking between car parks in the district.
“Don’t forget we do have a carbon reduction target in this district. We want to reduce our carbon footprint and get to net zero by … 2030. I think we should be — and I am not alone here — discouraging the use of cars in our town centres, particularly historic town centres where roads are tight and narrow and there is an awful lot of pollution and poor air quality.”
However, the motion was agreed by a majority vote.
The cabinet was being asked to endorse proposals for the authority’s 2025/26 budget, which will be put to a full council vote later this month.
The remaining budget proposals include a 2.99 per cent council tax increase. If implemented, this would bring Rother‘s share of the annual bill for a Band D household to £210.65 — an increase of £6.11 on the current financial year.
The initial proposals also included planned savings and income generation totalling £1.176 million. This figure had included the new car parking charges, however.
When put together, the new car parking charges were expected to generate somewhere in the region of £74,000 in new income for the council. Their removal from the budget proposals will bring the council’s total savings proposals for next year down to a little over £1.1 million.
These savings are offset by growth (i.e. increased costs) in other areas of council activity, which is expected to come to £540,639. As a result, the council can expect a net savings position of around £561,785 — short of the authority’s £1.4 million target.
The proposals also include plans to draw £619,000 from reserves to balance the overall budget. This amount is equal to a deficit in the council’s spending. It is unclear if this deficit figure takes into account the savings proposals.
