Fair Residential Parking Charges?
It seems that the election of Cllr Mirza continues to dominate the political agenda, at least on social media.
Forest Gate blogger and supporter of Mayor Fiaz, Martin Warne has waded in to criticise Mirza.
The three claims:
ULEZ compliance and “double charging”.
It’s not a tax, it’s a charge for a service.
How will he make up the shortfall?
ULEZ and Double Charging
On this one, Mr Warne does seem to have a point. The “double charging” allegation works rhetorically, but is it true?
The ULEZ means that more-polluting (older) cars are charged, less polluting cars are not. The principle is the same for emissions-based parking charges. But the emissions-based charge has a sliding scale on the basis of the engine size, and therefore the likely pollution levels of different cars.
One charge goes to the Mayor of London, the other to the Mayor of Newham.
As Mr Warne notes, one charge is for using your car and one is for parking it. A distinction without a difference? And not entirely correct. If you bring a 16-year-old car into the ULEZ, you will be charged for every day that it is within the ULEZ regardless of whether you drive it or it is parked.
In respect of this allegation, Newham is only doing what other boroughs are doing. There seem to be two policy objectives, (1) to reduce emissions by reducing the level of use of private cars, and (b) generate income for City Hall and Newham Council.
It is a double whammy and the costs fall upon motorists. As Mr Warne states, 90% of London motorists are already ULEZ compliant. They are the ones who could afford a new petrol-driven vehicle or a new EV. Effectively, they have paid their “tax” by way of the costs of the new vehicle in order to become compliant. There are over 2.6m private cars in London. Some 260,000 are not compliant. Generally, their owners will not be pleased at the thought of having to fork out thousands of pounds for a new vehicle. That’s a lot of people to upset.
It’s Not a Tax, it’s a Service
Cllr Mirza has called the new parking charges a form of taxation on motorists, so, is the residential parking permit a charge for a service or a means of unrestricted taxation?
What service?
Car owners pay vehicle tax to legally drive (and park) their vehicles on the public road. They pay for the upkeep of local roads via their council tax (and a subsidy from national government, also raised from taxation).
The ability to freely park on the road is being increasingly restricted (by red and yellow lines; by pay-to-park schemes; by RPZs).
Before we condemn every urban council, this is largely a response to increased numbers of private vehicles on the road. There are now 32.7m cars on UK roads. In 2000, there were some 27.2m. If you go back to 1990 it was about 20m, to 1970, it was nearer 12m.
These private vehicles exist on road systems that were built for the Victorians, before the introduction of the private motor vehicle. It is not unreasonable to question the ability of the urban infrastructure to cope with this increase; an increase that is projected to go beyond 40m in the next two decades.
It is difficult to read the ability to park near to your home as a “service”. Certainly, the introduction of RPZs introduces the concept of permission. Residents are granted “permission” to park near their home, but a permit and a service are different things.
This difference in definition is a potential source of difficulty in selling the idea. Being told that you are receiving a service when clearly, you are not, might cause some residents to baulk.
There is the additional complication of changes to the way in which the residential permits are being offered and what the scheme replaces.
Under the Wales administration, the first permit was free. Every household in an RPZ could park one car for free. This was a generous and popular scheme. RPZs were not generally seen as money grabbing exercises by the council. They restricted parking within the RPZ to residents and thus limited the number of vehicles parking in an area.
Mayor Fiaz and Cllr Asser have introduced two changes. They have abolished the free permit and they have introduced a sliding scale of charges according to the degree to which they pollute the atmosphere.
When you remove a benefit and then start to charge for it, it is bound to cause resentment, and it has. It is difficult to see this policy change as anything more than a way to increase the council’s income, in common parlance, a tax on parking.
The introduction of Emissions-Based Charging for residential parking, is not unique to Newham. Mayor Fiaz and Cllr Asser, are promoting the policy as “fair” (see previous article). It is certainly rational, you pollute more, you pay more.
It is touted as a fair response to concerns about the environment and Britain’s ability to meet its carbon reduction targets. Where this strikes car owners as unfair is, when the owners of larger cars are more likely to be supporting a family. The cost of paying the charge is on the shoulders of the breadwinner(s), with no reduction for those in the household who are not earning. It is effectively a hidden charge on those who will feel the additional burden most acutely. A successful young professional with an EV pays £30 pa; a worker on a modest wage, supporting a wife and children who runs an estate car pays hundreds.
This was not by design, but is the unintended outcome of a policy which has reasonable stated aims. Politics is full of unintended outcomes.
As far as the policy goes, if this results in people getting rid of older and larger cars, this is a good thing. The aim is not to improve the resident experience, but is to reduce the national rate of carbon emissions.
Whether residents will see this as fair is another matter. Local governments are acting on behalf of the national government in order to produce a policy outcome determined by Westminster and they are doing it under the umbrella of a scheme that was introduced for another reason entirely. It feels deceitful.
RPZs were introduced to benefit residents and ensure that they could park close to home; they seem to have become the means to rake in a considerable income to support the council’s ailing budget.
Addressing Mr Warne’s point directly, there isn’t a service.
The policy aim is not primarily to improve parking availability, it is to deliver a reduction in pollution and CO2. It has the added benefit of generating significant sums for the council’s coffers and the belief is that the capacity to generate unrestricted income is more important than Fiaz and Asser are letting on.
Mr Warne does suggest that it is comparable to the charges for cyclists using the secure on-street cycle stores. It isn’t.
On this one, it does seem that Cllr Mirza is closer to getting it right than is Mr Warne.
That being said, if Newham were brave enough to state clearly that the policy was not about resident parking, but about reducing the number of cars on the road and in private ownership, then the policy might make more sense in that the outcomes would be aligned to the policy objectives.
However, being that honest would be unlikely to make either them or the policy more popular with the electorate.
How Will the Council Make Up the Shortfall?
The last point made by Mr Warne is that of loss to the council’s revenue. He rather accusingly asks Cllr Mirza, how he would make up the shortfall in revenues?
This does rather give the game away.
Until Mayor Fiaz came into office, the aim of the RPZs was to provide local parking for residents and income raised was sufficient to cover the costs of maintaining the RPZs.
Since then, it seems to have become a necessary income-generator to supplement the council’s income.
Asking how the income will be made up if charges are abolished is a fair question. A better one would be, why is the council in such a financial mess?
Mr Warne ends with a bit of gratuitous insulting. He’s not entirely wrong in some of this. There does seem to be something of an incongruity about a millionaire landlord being Corbyn supporter, but as we have mentioned elsewhere, he is not the only millionaire landlord on Newham Council.
It may be that Warne has fallen out with Mirza because Fiaz fell out with Mirza. They didn’t seem to have the same antagonistic relationship when they were both campaigning for Fiaz only a few years ago. How things change…