Edinburgh scraps plans for workplace parking charge

Drivers could have been charged up to £650 a year for parking outside their work as part of the scheme

Plans to charge drivers for parking outside their place of work in Edinburgh have been shelved.

The city council said it was "not appropriate" to introduce the workplace parking levy (WPL) scheme, which could have seen some motorists charged up to £650 a year.

It had been hoped the charge would raise up to £12m a year, while also cutting the number of car journeys in the city centre and reducing air pollution.

But councillors opted against paying £100,000 to develop a final proposal for the project following a public consultation.

The local authority began investigating the scheme in 2018.

Businesses would have been charged per available space every year, but could have passed the cost on to drivers at their own discretion.

Money raised would have been poured back in to the city’s sustainable and active travel infrastructure, mirroring a similar scheme in Nottingham.

The Scottish government introduced legislation, allowing councils to decide whether or not they wanted to go ahead with plans, in 2019 as part of its budget agreement with the Scottish Greens

However a consultation held between November and February found "mixed views" on support for the project.

'No carrots'

Kevin Lang, leader of the council’s Lib Dem group, also suggested commuters could "very easily avoid paying any charge at all simply by parking on a residential street and walking along a footway or across a road".

Labour’s Katrina Faccenda added moving forward with the introduction of a parking levy would be "hitting working people with a big huge stick" and "not giving them any carrots".

She said many residents living in new houses on the edge of the city tended to be lower-paid workers who commuted into the city centre.

Ms Faccenda added: "They are a fair walk to the bus stop or nearest train station.

"If they're working shifts we know making use of public transport sometimes becomes impossible at the moment or could even involve two or three buses."

It was agreed "no further work" should be undertaken on the WPL "until a plan is developed in partnership with trade unions, employers and community councils to address the predictable and non-trivial negative impacts such as displacement parking and the impact of shift workers".

Instead, the council called on officials to investigate "other legal and financial options available to the council which can address, in particular, the substantial number of vehicles travelling into Edinburgh from outside of the local authority area each day".

Reporting by local democracy journalist Donald Turvill.