Tax on parking: UK cities to impose levy on cars in bid to cut pollution
Councils across the UK are using radical strategies to cut the number of polluting vehicles on their streets in response to the climate emergency.
Leicester city council hopes a new charge on workplace parking will improve air quality, fund public transport and incentivise walking and cycling.
The power to raise a “workplace parking levy” (WPL) from local businesses was introduced by Labour more than 20 years ago. But parking is such a controversial issue in local government that Nottingham is the only city in the UK with a scheme.
Leicester is now set to become the second: it is consulting on proposals to charge companies with more than 10 parking spaces £550 a year per space from next year. It is up to employers to decide whether to absorb the cost or pass it on to their staff. It could raise £450m in the next decade to invest in a new fleet of electric buses, an expanded cycle network and train station renovations.
Adam Clarke, Leicester’s deputy mayor for environment and transport, wants to use the workplace parking levy more broadly to move away from car dominance.
Clarke said: “We’re a historic city. The road network has been built on a Roman footprint and it suffered from making way for the motor car in the postwar period, which attracted more cars, which has constrained the city.
“We have worked really hard to generate a shift to cycling, walking and the bus. But there needs to be more than a step change, there needs to be a real leap if we’re going to meet our environmental, economic and health challenges.”
The plans have been condemned by some businesses, opposition councillors and motoring organisations. Nigel Porter, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Leicester, said: “The current proposals are just stick, there’s no
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