The council was accused of subsiding drivers with a proposal to freeze parking charges and resident permit prices.
The claim was made by former Green local election candidate Mark Strong who now sits as a co-opted member of Brighton and Hove City Council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
Mr Strong told the committee on Friday (7 February) that it was a subsidy for high-income groups and, by extension, a tax on everyone else.
But Labour cabinet member Trevor Muten said that it was unhelpful to characterise drivers as wealthy, not least given the number of key workers who relied on a car for work.
The exchanges took place as the committee debated the Labour-led council’s budget proposals for the 2025-26 financial year which starts in April.
Labour councillor John Hewitt asked why the council was making less money from parking even though charges had gone up.
The budget report said: “Parking charges are being frozen partly because traffic in the city has reduced since the pandemic – a key objective of sustainable transport policies.”
It was also “partly to balance the impact on the visitor and business economies and partly because other alternatives for disincentivising car use in the urban area, including park and ride, are being developed”.
Mr Strong, who represents the community and voluntary sector, said that various groups were concerned that freezing parking charges was a “tax on everyone”, particularly the majority who do not travel by car.
He said: “What you’re doing is providing a subsidy for high-income groups in Brighton and visitors to Brighton at the expense of low-paid people in Brighton.
“The lowest 10 per cent of people don’t have access to cars. Car ownership only becomes higher in the upper rangers of income.
And freezing parking charges to “stimulate demand” went against policies in the council’s local transport plan to reduce car use, he added.
Councillor Muten, the council’s cabinet member for transport and parking, said that over the past five years parking charges had gone up by 50 per cent.
From 2018 to 2021, parking charges rose by 2 per cent a year. They went up 10 per cent in 2021-22 and by 15 per cent in 2022-23 and a further 15 per cent in 2023-24. The increase last year was 6 per cent.
Councillor Muten said that Labour scrapped the quadrupling of on-street parking charges in four parking zones two months after taking over the council in 2023.
The big increases covered four parking zones including the area around Royal Sussex County Hospital, affecting patients and staff.
He said: “To suggest that people with cars are exclusively people who have got wealth is not quite true.
“I really think that’s an unhelpful characterisation because there are people who are key workers in our city.”
The committee was told that parking charges helped to fund unprofitable bus routes but the above-inflation price rises were not bringing in the income needed, with a significant drop in the number of drivers parking in the centre of Brighton.
Councillor Muten added: “Price hikes previously have not been helpful for many other aspects of the city. I do include that in terms of social inequality in our city.
“It’s prohibitive for those people on lower incomes to come and drive around the city so they can get to their jobs – those key workers on lower incomes.”
Some 500 parking spaces had been removed, notably prime spaces on the seafront such as those in Madeira Drive, costing the council £1.2 million a year, he said.
The Labour deputy leader of the council, Jacob Taylor, said that the Green party position was astronomical increases in parking charges.
He said that residents in Moulsecoomb and Bevendean often tended to be slightly older and used cars to get into town for shopping and hospital appointments.
Councillor Taylor said: “What’s being said is that you must use parking as a blunt instrument to stop people using their cars and coming into the city and do it in a flat regressive way and put people off from coming it.
“It has a huge impact on people in outlying areas. Of course we would like them to get a bus or cycle in. When they do drive, it’s a flat tax on them – a flawed strategy in pure financial terms. We keep losing income.”
Brighton and Hove Independent councillor Mark Earthey suggested an “increase by stealth” by adjusting parking rates by different times of day.
Green councillor Sue Shanks said that the council could bring in more controlled parking schemes if it wanted to generate revenue.
Councillor Shanks said: “There are several areas in the city which don’t have parking schemes and are very congested in terms of parking. We don’t agree with freezing parking fees at all.”
Consultation on a controlled parking zone is currently under way in Hollingdean. The Nevill area of Hove is high up the council’s priority list for a similar consultation. People in Portslade and Rottingdean have also asked for parking permit schemes.
Conservative councillor Ivan Lyons said that his group welcomed the parking charge freeze and would like charges to be reduced.
The papers before the committee at Hove Town Hall on Friday said that the council would have to find savings totalling £16 million in the coming financial year.
The council is proposing another 4.99 per cent increase in council tax, with about 40 per cent of the rise to be ringfenced for adult social care.
The budget is due to be set at a meeting of the full council at Hove Town Hall on Thursday 27 February, starting at 4.30pm. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
To read a thread of live Bluesky posts from the Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting on skywriter.blue, click here.
“The council is proposing another 4.99 per cent increase in council tax, with about 40 per cent of the rise to be ringfenced for adult social care”
Incorrect.
The social care premium is 2.99% so would be 60% of the total 4.99% increase.
Don’t agree with Mark here. I find his logic here flawed. I find Mark Strong’s assertion that freezing parking charges subsidises high-income groups at the expense of others to be overly simplistic.
This perspective fails to consider that many key workers, who are essential to our community, rely on cars due to the nature of their jobs and the limitations of public transport, I am one of them.
Others have commented that significant increases in parking fees have previously led to decreased city centre visits, adversely affecting local businesses and the broader economy.
I think Mark’s assertion was based on the fact that the more money people have, the more likely they are to own cars so more likely to make car journeys and require parking spaces. Hence, they are more likely to financially benefit more from frozen parking charges than people on low or zero incomes, including key workers.
Surplus income from parking revenue can be used to improve other modes of transport, such as buses. By reducing parking income growth by freezing charges, reduces the money available to improve bus services. So this, again, is more likely to impact people with less money – including key workers.
Imo it’s a no brainer for the council (and government) to be investing in public transport. Their fixation on subsidising car travel on our small crowded island is very short sighted.
One of their many policies which seeks to attract the populist vote – it’s all about headlines for them in the short term, rather than what’s actually better overall and forward thinking.
I think Mark’s assertion was based on fiction and fantasy tbh.
He’s living in a dream world if he really believes only those with greater incomes are likely to own cars. Facts are, Covid destroyed much of the transport network with very limited bus services running, despite key workers still needing to perform their duties. People were discouraged from using buses when lockdown restrictions started to be lifted and not all bus services have returned to their original timetables. Many people had no choice but obtain their own means of transport some of those are key workers who like the rest of us are financially struggling.
Labour councillor John Hewitt asked why the council was making less money from parking even though charges had gone up.
Because the previous Adminstration
1) removed several hundred parking bays across the city.
2) increased prices beyond what people wanted to pay.
Max says reducing parking income growth reduces the money available to improve bus services. But that’s exactly what’s happened as a result of charges being ramped up year after year. He ignores the ‘price elasticity’ which has been tested to the extreme by this greedy Council. Now, my family order online so they don’t get mugged by extortionate parking charges or ripoff bus fares. When we shop in person, we aim for places like Holmbush where parking is free, or we go to Bluewater.
I used to do a lot of work within the city with lots of businesses doing various teaching requiring a lot of different teaching aides/books etc meaning I need to use a vehicle. With all the problems getting into the town due to poor traffic management and costs of parking I no longer take on work in the city and earn more driving to Burgess Hill/Worthing etc as I can keep my prices low.
Want to save money?
Cancel VG3 – save £7m.
Clear out the clueless and profligate sustainable transport ideologues in the Transport Department.
Stop pandering to the nutters in the cycling lobby
Seconded.
Failed Green candidate Mark Strong who says he ‘represents’ the voluntary sector but is far more keen on pushing his pro bike / anti car agenda which is neither helpful or realistic. Mark forgets many of us do not live in central Kemptown but right on the edges of town, or perhaps we need a car for work, or are elderly or disabled? Not rising car parking prices is NOT subsidising drivers – in fact parking fees in Brighton are the highest in the country outside of London and drivers are subsidising free bus passes and various transport infrastructure schemes with the tens of millions they currently pay into the council coffers.
Mark and Max are like Green versions of Trump with their infantile approach, ignoring empirical evidence and pretending to speak up for the poor while putting forward policies which only really help the well-off. Have they learned nothing from the Green wipe-out almost 2 years ago? People are fed up with their silly nonsense.
Mr Strong claims that parking charges don’t affect the poorest. Wrong! Yes, they may not have cars, but they still end up paying for this tax (and tax it is as parking makes around £20m a year above costs in Brighton which subsidises transport budget costs)
Why do people without cars pay for parking? They have to directly in resident areas when they pay for guest parking permits for trades. Possibly for visitors too, depending if they feel the need to pay to help them visit. Indirectly everyone pays – extra costs for local businesses and people working for it, trader permits for businesses. All of these costs get added to everyday items – particularly local shops and businesses (just the type of local shops the greens encourage us to use).
A fairer and less regressive tax would be to put these costs on council tax. But parking tax is seen as for “the rich” but it doesn’t take long to realise that this hurts key workers, tradespeople with vans (who also have to pay more as “high” emission) and other groups who are not highly paid (but who have to drive for their jobs).
It’s a pity that resident passes haven’t decreased in price (as some off-street parking has). They are far above many cities and the council is using them as a revenue stream. As the controlled zones move ever outward they are reaching our more deprived areas where average incomes are far below many areas. Hollingdean is next on this list and are voting again currently. They turned down A CPZ when presented with prices last time (after voting yes to needing a CPZ). Unbelievably, the council are offering the same high prices again, not a light touch scheme as a local councillor said would be the answer in the press.
I’m not sure people did actually vote for a scheme, when we received a letter to voice our opinion choice there was only two questions, would we want a light touch scheme or a full scheme, no where did it ask if we wanted a scheme.
I’d query why, and how, non-elected failed Green Party candidate, and pro-cycling anti-motorist activist, Mark Strong ever got co-opted onto the committee?
Want to save money stop the public servants gold plated pensions which rise every year.
What an absurd, reductionist, borderline dumb comment. These are the decision makers smh.
The amount of money Brighton and Hove makes on parking is obscene. High parking charges inhibit visitor numbers, businesses and growth. The council should not be freezing these charges. They should be reducing them to the level where they are a break even service. That would be about a £20 million pound reduction for Brighton and Hove.
I’m a pensioner who spends a sizeable amount of my pension to fund a car and remain independent. We live in Peacehaven having moved from Preston Circus. Brighton is now a city only for students and cyclists. We rarely come back to Brighton now due to the mucked up road system and the horrendous parking charges. We prefer to shop in Eastbourne which is also cleaner and has less graffiti . Not surprised parking income is down – so is Brighton!
As a self-employed tradesman this city has got impossible to work in. I live here but will take jobs outside of town as first choice. Traffic has become gridlocked by extreme council policies of reducing capacity. And the parking is over priced. I charge a higher rate now for Brighton addresses, and add the parking costs to the bill. This council has directly caused prices to go up for their own residents.
And don’t be ill. The cost of visiting the hospital and related parking is insane. Especially made tough as you need to use parking bays that are not long enough for the time you then get stuck in A&E.
I used to enjoy shopping in the North Laines. Not visited in years now due to the parking. And I know many friends who will visit any town but Brighton due to how famous our parking charges are. A tourist town that has made parking so expensive it is cheaper to take the kids to Worthing or Eastbourne.
Selfish councillors like Strong seem to have lost touch with normal people.
But Brighton and Hove parking charges are already among the highest in Britain. How dare the car haters keep penalising people trying to earn a living, get their kids to increasingly far away schools on time or take their elderly mother out for the day. And even, God forbid, let visitors spend their hard-earned cash in our city! I will never offer a car hater a lift again. Let them paddle their own bicycle.