"Wirral Council's car parking revenue plummets after pay-and-display increase"

CLICKY - Wirral Globe

Next up: Wirral Council announces that the Pope is Catholic and bears defecate in the woods.

Don't quite believe the Pope one :-)

Cllr Phil Davies just dosen't get it, does he.

Thick as mince this lot.
Who could have expected increasing costs would lead to fewer people parking?
Massive, free parking, out of town shopping available or feel ripped off before you actually purchase anything.

Honestly can not believe these clowns are being paid by us to make these decisions.

They are going to kill stone dead the New Brighton rise from the ashes. Liscard will finish as a shopping centre, which it nearly is now and traders will go elsewhere. Well we know what to do next May get rid of as many of these clowns as possible.

Okay, let's try offering some suggestions and see if they'll help, it won't cure anything overnight, but who knows.

No.1 - Scrap parking charges, but limit parking in certain areas to 3-4 hours, this will stop people taking up the best spaces whilst they catch a train or try to sell their car. This will encourage shoppers back into the towns, which is where Councils need to make their money, or cut their outlay from, not easy cash from machines and tickets, it's too short-term and creates a long-term problem.

No.2 - Ban open alcohol from shopping areas. No one wants to fight past the town drunks to shop. Anyone found with open containers gets an automatic 7 day ban from the shopping area.

No.3 - Offer rates incentives to new business in shopping area. No one wants to go to a town if half of it is shut, or all of it is a clone of every other. Councils make no rates at all from an empty building, so instead you write off what you're not going to get and reduce your outlay by offering 2 or 3 years rates free with a discount in years 4 and 5 for anyone (not chain stores) who open a business taking on a minimum of one staff and one apprentice. The amount saved in rates more than pays for wages and the Council saves on Income Support and reduces its Jobless total, the town starts to breathe again and more people visit.

No.4 - Use people on Community Service productively. They don't want their 120 hrs to take forever, and not be completed anyway, and everybody else wants to see it being done, so, nice bright orange jumpsuit with Community Service or something similar on the back and a full day, 9-5 cleaning the areas in towns that always get missed, or need to be done more often. The sentence can be worked out in complete days, or half days, you have to do, so if you're late, you don't count the first half day, if you try to skip off early you lose your second half day. Get the area clean in a way that the Council basically can't afford to do. You're not taking away anyone's job as it's a Borough-wide project.

No.5 - Put all Council service offices in one location. Why do the Council need so many extremely expensive, inefficient and high maintenance buildings in such prime locations. One purpose built unit, get everyone together so there's half a chance they'll talk to each and know what's going on. Get rid of the buildings they have which will more than pay for a new one, which doesn't need to be in the town centre and let everyone know where it is so they're not bouncing from one to the other.

No.6 - Stop inventing things to quickly spend money on at the end of the tax year in a panic in case you lose it next. PLAN, ask people what they want, and if the money is left over for it, get it done, if it isn't, and it still wants doing, see if it's asked for next year.

No.7 - Create something new, look at how you spend money and see if there's a better way. Example: Set aside £1million, put it into an account with a reasonable rate of return, this should give you interest at around £1500 per week (this is very rough, work with me). You then pay ONE person, not a committee, not a group or society, just one person to pay up to £1000 each week for a project, item or charge which will improve that community. The amount must be the total, it can't be a part payment or funds towards, and it can't be an estimate it has to be for a quote supplied (by the community or group, even individual ) for it which this payment would achieve. The Council don't lose the money ever, the capital still sits in the account. One more person with a job as the additional interest pays their wage and costs to run the project (if it costs more, you cut costs, you can never use the capital or eat into the £1000 payment). If less than £1000 is required it is added to the capital. Improvements to the community, nicer place to live, society works together.

No.7 - Stop paying extortionate fees for "emergency" accommodation. If Wirral Council can afford to pay hotels in Liverpool £150+ PER NIGHT to house a family (and they do, it's not a nice hotel either) then they can afford to pay less than this per week by having some of their own housing stock as emergency use and cut their outlay.

Okay rant over, I could, as ever, go for hours.

Who knows, when someone from WBC reads this (and I know they do, I've seen it on your computers) maybe it'll be passed on and thought about.

Councilor The Dr

Good sound advice.

The Dr. Stop talking commonsense, the Council are getting even more baffled.

Excellent post good solutions now we just need them implementing.

Prefer to go to new Birkenhead, Croft industrial park, it's what Birkenhead should have looked like if the council hadn't used parking as a cash cow, using it to spend on more street furniture like traffic lights and the mess they have made of traffic flow on Woodchurch road, a flashing sign saying queues is no great help when you are trying to negotiate 3 set of lights in a queue.

Wasn't it Barnet Council that acted illegally, in setting parking charges to raise revenue? Unfortunately if the costs aren't covered by the charges, the councils are liable to subsidise the parking services. So at the end of the day, we pay whatever the weather. Just a sad fact, that they can't see further than the end of their nose ,in relation to businesses and how it affects them. Of course you will never get anyone of them admitting they are wrong, they just point the finger in a different direction, and try to fob us off with excuses.
When Mold in N.Wales charges only 20p for a few hours,how come our more local ones had an increase of 45p per hour to £1.05p. ? It's cheaper in total to go to Mold market and shops. It's only 20mins from Pensby to Mold and 20/ 25 mins to get to Birkenhead, with all the traffic lights, during the day. Grrrrrrrrr!

Having just read the minutes of the council meeting on the 14th October, it would seem there are plans to sell off the car park at New Brighton, a petition from the Field Road Residents Association. Would this not indicate that Wirral car parks in general could be sold off, hence the increase in parking fees, to make them seem like a rather good investment?
Of course the Country Parks would be added to the list of an increased lot if it goes ahead there too. Wheels within wheels. Maybe it's a wrong conclussion, but we have been made extremely sceptical of all actions in recent years.
Didn't realise but 5 of them are to be sold (free ones that is, but proba ly not for long , )

Widnes is even better it's free parking and all the big stores are around the area by Morrisons and are always very busy, not only that, the market indoors and the outdoor market is always full, we go on Wednesday, the place is humming with people using Widnes town centre, Birkenhead is just a dirty crappy dump not worth spending the high parking fees to go and visit, diesel at £1.33p at Asda and £1.34p at Tesco, to people who say it's cheaper to go to Birkenhead centre, you go, I'd rather shop where I enjoy even if it costs a bit more in fuel.

Interesting about flogging off the carpark at New Brighton, I wonder if a Phase III is in the offing ?, could be a Labour council hitting us trash to help the rich.

Where does the revenue come from to pay someone to to enforce the 3-4 hours parking?.

Scrapping parking charges does not mean that you can park anywhere, double yellow lines, bus lanes, the middle of a traffic junction, they'll all still be ticketable, what would be happening is the removal of charges from areas previously you would have had to pay for.

The 3-4 hour limit isn't for car parks or for someone who spends an extra 20mins having a coffee it's just to cover someone who'll move his entire stock of cars to the Multi-Storey at ASDA and run a business from there as he doesn't have to pay for parking.

When we make laws/rules they're for a particular reason, not to be followed blindly with no relation to their original intention.

Cheery Tree Centre is dead, check out this link and read near the bottom about Charity Fundraising Dates. This is listed under Latest News 2008!!!!.

http://www.cherrytreecentre.co.uk/latest_news.html

Fabulous Dr - just fabulous.