Thousands of drivers face rise in parking charges and skip permit fees

Drivers face parking charges being hiked in one region of England as we head after Christmas. Drivers could see parking charges hiked in North West in a bid to help plug a council overspending hole, it has emerged, after a £29million overspend.

Drivers in Liverpool Council area - which has a 480,000 population - have been warned by council leader Liam Robinson charges could be hiked. Among the measures being considered to address the deficit are increases in parking charges and on-street skip permit fees.

He told BBC Radio Merseyside: "Liverpool City Council is not going bankrupt and we're in the right, stable position that we should be at this moment half way through the financial year.” The council will be setting a new budget in February for the next financial year.

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"Obviously we'll be looking at all of those different options, particularly when we get our financial settlement from the Government later on this year," Robinson said. Robinson added: "There's lots of detailed work that's going on to make sure that we balance our budgets by the end of the financial year.

"I think the key thing from our perspective is that we're managing that very, very closely in terms of some of the overspends that we've got.” Mr Robinson said spiralling demand in areas like social services and homelessness had contributed to the figure.

However he said the authority was not on the verge of bankruptcy and he was "optimistic" for the future. And Mr Robinson said he was confident that Labour would implement a "better deal" for local government than the previous Conservative administration.

"I think the future for the city is a bright one, we have got a government who sees Liverpool as an opportunity and wants to work with us in a way that actually the last government quite frankly didn't, for a lot of reasons," he said.

"So yes I'm optimistic, but I'm also realistic that these things will inevitably take some time."