New parking rule in England mean drivers face £145 charge to leave car
Parking fees in a popular tourist region are set to rise by 40 per cent next year impacting thousands of road users. Gwynedd Council will implement the new charges on April 1, 2025, next year, as the new tax year and financial year arrives.
Parking charges in a popular tourist region are set to increase by a staggering 40 per cent as a local authority is forced to make “difficult decisions” affecting roughly 117,400 people. Gwynedd Council continues to face a “severe financial deficit”.
It hopes that the move will “realise significant savings” for the local authority. The approved scheme will see increases in Pen y Gwryd parking fees from £2 for half a day and £4 for a full day to £4 for six hours and £8 for 12 hours.
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Other increases include the price of an Annual Parking Ticket from £140 to £145 per year and the price of a Local Parking Ticket from £70 to £75 per year. The Council will also extend the enforcement hours of short-stay car parks from 10am to 4:30pm to 9am until 5pm.
The Council explained: “To update the parking strategy and offer appropriate solutions in order to meet the sufficient level of income that is expected from the Department. It must be recognized that parking can be a contentious issue and that proposals for parking management can provoke strong feelings from a personal and local perspective.
“However, all options must be looked at and a review of the arrangements is inevitable in terms of financial sustainability in this challenging period in terms of the authority's budgets.” “May as well knock downtown centres and create social housing, as the majority of us shop online and visit retail parks,” one driver fumed in reply.
A second said the local authority should employ more traffic wardens on streets as “they would make more money in fines of people parking on zig-zags, double yellow lines, curb corners and make the towns safer”. “Should the parking fee structure and the number of people using the car parks remain the same this year, it is predicted that the service would underperform by over £870,000” the local authority added.