According to the response below “What is this excess revenue spent on? – This income is not separated from the total income received from car parking, which is used to fund the service itself and helps to fund a range of services provided by the Council.”
Er, what range of services? Income from parking is meant to be spent only on parking related projects and creaming-off the overpayments for “other services provided by the council” is very questionable to say the least and possibly illegal, though Owl will bow to the expertise of EDDC’s legal eagles on that point – and fortunately we do gave an expert councillor too – Chairman Hughes.
Let’s hope they follow correct procedure for using surplus funds, which is:
“Safer Parking:
In deciding how to spend their parking surplus, local authorities should have regard for the advice given in the Local Government Association’s Circular 535/00. This circular urges authorities to work towards Safer Parking Accreditation (Park Mark®), and to consider using parking surpluses to fund the necessary measures.
The circular refers to section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and argues that this Act together with the provisions of section 55 of the 1984 Act makes it both necessary and desirable for authorities to prioritise spending on crime prevention measures in car parks before consideration is given to spending parking surpluses in other areas.”
Click to access PPN1%20-%20Charging%20for%20Parking%20-%20Aug%202011.pdf
Here is the Freedom of Information request:
“Date submitted: 15 September 2016
Summary of request
• Over the past five financial years how much money has the council made through parking-overpayments from its meters i.e. “over-vend” in parking meters that do not give out change?
• What is this excess revenue spent on?
• How many of these parking meters do the council manage?
• Over the past five financial years how much money has the council made in total through car parking meters?
Summary of response
• Over the past five financial years how much money has the council made through parking-overpayments from its meters i.e. “over-vend” in parking meters that do not give out change? – There were no overpayments in the financial years up to and including 2013/14 as our machines were programmed then to give the appropriate time for the money inserted into ticket machines. Because we wanted to add more choice to the customer, from the 1st April 2014 we introduced 2, 3 and 4 day permits. This meant that the memory available in the current ticket machines did not allow for the previous increments and so we introduced 50p increments without the option to give change.
2014/15 – £16,946 Gross inc VAT ( NET £14,122); 2015/16 – £15,066 Gross inc VAT (NET £12,555)
• What is this excess revenue spent on? – This income is not separated from the total income received from car parking, which is used to fund the service itself and helps to fund a range of services provided by the Council.
• How many of these parking meters do the council manage? – Currently we have 61 ticket machines.
• Over the past five financial years how much money has the council made in total through car parking meters? – The figures below are the NET income (which is how we report in the accounts/budgets etc) for the respective years just for the ticket machine income and Parkmobile charges.
2011/12 – £2,401,376
2012/13 – £2,244,874
2013/14 – £2,346,703
2014/15 – £2,477,864
2015/16 – £2,554,583
Date responded: 23 September 2016
show details
http://eastdevon.gov.uk/access-to-information/freedom-of-information/freedom-of-information-published-requests/
m
East Devon Watch 