Sheffield council votes against free Christmas parking options

No Christmas parking offer had been included in the budget proposals, meeting told

A council has voted against plans to offer free parking in a city centre over Christmas, despite calls from businesses.

Sheffield City Council considered a number of options, including free all-day parking on selected dates.

However, a meeting was told no Christmas parking offer had been included in the budget proposals agreed for this financial year.

Christmas free parking was last offered in 2020 during Covid-19 recovery.

The options considered by the authority's waste and street scene committee were free all-day parking in the city centre on Sundays between 19 November and 24 December and free all-day parking on selected weekends in December.

Ahead of the vote, councillor Sioned-Mair Richards asked whether it was "responsible and prudent" to make a spending commitments around this when there was no budget allocated.

The council, like many local authorities across the country, has struggled to balance its budget in recent years.

The authority had planned to make £47m in savings this year and not use any of its dwindling reserves, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.