Liam Robinson said he accepted the decision to extend charging in the city centre wouldn’t be universally popular
The leader of Liverpool Council has defended the move to end free parking in the city centre calling it a “necessary decision.” It was confirmed last week that despite almost 90% of people who responded to a survey saying they were against the amendment, the city council is pressing ahead with extending its parking restrictions to 11pm.
From next month, drivers will be charged from 7am to 11pm, rather than the current length of 8am to 6pm. It will also cost motorists more to leave their car in a city bay as 30 minutes parking in the city centre has gone up from £1.20 to £2 while an hour will now cost £4, up from £2.40.
Speaking exclusively to the ECHO, Cllr Liam Robinson, leader of Liverpool Council, said he accepted the move would not be “universally popular” but described the increase as “proportionate” for a city the size of Liverpool. The decision has already attracted criticism from opposition groups and businesses who are concerned how it will impact them.
The Liverpool BID Company, which represents hundreds of levy-paying firms in the city centre, voiced its concerns about the major change and called on the council to u-turn. It is expected the charging amendments are to go live in June.
Cllr Robinson said: “We always knew this wouldn’t be a universally popular decision, I think if you asked most people they would wish we’d have free parking all day, every day. As we set out in the process, historically we’ve been charging at lower levels than most cities across the country and haven’t changed these for a number of years so there’s an element of catch-up with inflation.
“We believe what we will be implementing is proportionate for a big city of our nature with everything that’s going on. We’ve tried to take as focused an approach as possible of the right charges in the right places and also working with Steve Rotheram (Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region) to freeze bus fares so we can provide a better public transport offer as well.”
The decision to end free parking comes almost three years after it was first proposed by city councillors, having first been announced in 2022. The largest opposition group in the Town Hall, the Liberal Democrats, described the charging extension as a “hospitality tax” and confirmed they would seek to undo the move.
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Cllr Robinson said the decision was taken based on the parking offer across the centre of town. He said: “I would always say we’re only talking about 28% of the parking spaces within the city, yes that’s a large amount, but the vast majority of spaces are controlled by private car parking companies and they charge a lot more and around the clock.
“We fully acknowledge that it was never going to be universally popular but we do believe it’s necessary and proportionate. From our perspective we’ve looked at other cities and we realised to do something later is the right thing to do.
“We’re very live to the needs of low-paid workers, that’s why we’ve tried to freeze bus fares and reintroduce some 24-hour routes around all of that.”
Some concerns were raised regarding the vast amount of respondents to the city council’s consultation indicating they did not want increased tariffs to park in the city centre or to have to fork out for longer. The council leader explained how the revenue generated would be utilised.
He said: “I appreciate these things are never going to be popular but equally we have to balance these things out with the additional revenue this will raise that will go into enforcement. Everybody right across the city is calling for that and rightfully we want to deliver that.
“It will put more resources into things that support the visitor economy like street cleaning. The resources raised will go back into those frontline services people want us to invest in.
“We were live to the fact this was going to be one of those not universally popular but necessary decisions. We have taken on board thoughts and that’s why a review point has been built in.”
