Graham, Tom and Ian

Your Lib Dem team for Cheadle West & Gatley Learn more

Parking changing to boost Cheadle village traders

by Lib Dem team on 22 March, 2013

In my role at the Council in charge of Transportation policy, I’m proposing a number of changes to parking which will have an effect on Cheadle.

Cutting the cost of short-term parking

Right across Stockport, we are proposing moving car parking to an hourly rate. In the centre of Stockport the rate will be 80p an hour. In Cheadle and the other district centres it will move to 20p an hour, so 1 hour parking 20p, 2 hours 40p up to a maximum fee of £2 for the day. That’s a 50% cut in the cost of popping into Cheadle for an hour.

Parking permit costs to be slashed in Cheadle

That will mean a big drop in parking permit charges in Cheadle (as they are based on a percentage of the full day fee). The Mon-Fri three month permit is currently £138.46 and was due to go up to £167.31 in April. I’ve stopped that increase and, if my proposals go ahead, the cost of the three month Mon-Fri permit will drop to £90.

I am proposing that people who benefit from residents’ parking schemes should cover the cost of their scheme (around £40 a year, up from £21 now) as I don’t think it’s fair to ask council taxpayers to continue to subsidise residents parking. There are a small number of residents parking schemes in Cheadle (though none in Gatley).

Residents parking schemes asked to cover their costs

Under this proposal, residents in every existing scheme will be asked whether they want to keep the scheme and pay more to cover the cost, or lose the scheme (this will take about a year to work through). Where schemes are currently free, the same will apply – residents will have the choice of moving to a scheme that covers its costs or ending it.

Where schemes are in local centres, we want every scheme to include free one-hour limited parking for anyone during the daytime, unless there’s a very good reason not to. In Cheadle that would include Chapel Street, for example. That means residents have the parking to themselves overnight, when everyone’s back from work, but in the daytime when the bays are often largely unused, shoppers and visitors could make use of them. It’s about using the parking we have as effectively as possible and getting the balance right between residents and others.

 More parking enforcement

In response to residents’ requests, we have also boosted the number of traffic wardens in Cheadle and Gatley (and other parts of Stockport) over the last year. Ashfield Road in Cheadle is now in the top-five roads in Stockport for parking tickets!

These proposals apply equally everywhere, but because Gatley currently has no paid parking and no residents parking, Gatley residents won’t see any changes.

Cashless parking

Remember that you can also pay for your car parking by internet, phone, text or smartphone app in every Council car park across Stockport. It just takes a minute or two to register at https://www.myringgo.co.uk/. I’ve found the easiest way is to download the free Ringgo smartphone app (for iPhone or Android) – I can park the car, walk to the shops and I’ve paid by the time I leave the car park.

 

   11 Comments

11 Responses

  1. Alistair says:

    Hi, Iain. As a small business owner in Cheadle anything that reduces the costs for me and my customers is, generally speaking, a good thing. However, is there not a concern that £2 a day might lead to an influx of day parkers, thereby reducing the spaces available to shoppers who are coming to Cheadle to spend money, and impacting negatively on local businesses?

  2. Iain Roberts says:

    Hi Alistair,

    I think we’ll have to monitor that. The concern about all-day parking led to the higher day price (which is substantially higher than most other district centre car parks around Stockport) but has the knock-on effect of parking permits costing a lot too.

    If we need to raise the price, that will be possible, but it will mean the cost of parking permits also rising, so I hope it will prove not to be needed.

  3. Angela says:

    As a retailer on Chapel Street I would welcome and support your proposals for parking out of certain hours on this busy thoroughfare.

    The benefit to the trading and retail sector would be huge.

  4. Alan Gent says:

    Iain , good news about day time use of residents spaces. I’m happy to pay 30p but popping in for a paper, this will be useful. I don’t really see the need to reduce the charge to 20p- it’s not a big cost for parking, but I would like to highlight the increasingly heavy parking on Milton Crescent. This is both sides of the road, often creating blind spots when turning into Milton. Most of these appear to be visitors to the beauty salon, there are always two vehicles form the air con business and a couple of cars who park there all day. I feel at the very least it should be double yellows on one side. We are blessed with good parking in Cheadle at reasonable cost and everyone should be “encouraged” to use it.

  5. Les Leckie says:

    You know I am in favour of the flexible resident parking proposals, Iain, but does it really have to take a year to work through? I have been pressing you about this issue for more than a year already. Action is required now when many spaces have already been lost due to construction work.

  6. garry says:

    Lets hope this finally stops people parking on the double yellow lines on Oak road which makes it dangerous turning from Stockport road. Also can somthing be done to stop people using the conservative club parking on them at night? I understand they need to park but they are double yellow lines and it makes that end of our road difficult to get through.

  7. John Allwork says:

    Dear Iain

    If you are saying that £21 doesn’t cover the cost of residents parking, how was this sum arrived at initially?
    If the cost has increased because of extra wardens who enforce parking restrictions elsewhere then I don’t see why it should be paid for by the residents parking schemes.

    It seems a co-incidence that the increase of the PPS comes at the same time as the decrease in these car parking costs.

    Can you please provide me with a breakdown of the costs of the residents parking scheme to justify your £40 charge.

    I would like to point out that the PPS scheme states specifically that they are not revenue generators and should therefore not be used to support other schemes.

    John Allwork

  8. Chris Hornby says:

    You fail to mention it’s a 30% increase if you park in Cheadle for 2 hours!

  9. Bob says:

    All parking in shopping areas should be free, the loss of revenue would be made up from the savings of installing and maintaining the ticket machines and enforcement, more people would then come and stay longer and hopefully spend more in the local shops etc.If there was a shortfall, then maybe the larger stores could make that up, by way of higher business rates.

  10. Iain Roberts says:

    John – it was before my time, so I don’t know why the sum of £21 was arrived at. However, I can confirm that the cost of residents parking schemes themselves works out as £40 – we are not now, and will not in future, ask residents in parking schemes to subsidise anything else. At the moment, the cost of the permits does not cover the cost of the residents parking schemes.

    Chris – Overall the aim is to keep the money coming in to be about the same, but we’ve tried to cut the prices most important for the local economy.

    Bob – We’ve looked at that and the numbers don’t currently stack up for taking that approach. The money from parking (which also goes towards maintaining the car parks, for example) is much higher than the cost of traffic wardens and ticket machines, and the difference couldn’t easily be made up.

  11. […] Report on proposed changes to parking tarrifs to 20p/hour in District Centres and 80p/hour in Stockport Town Centre.  I reported on this last week. […]

Leave a Reply

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>