Decision on new Wirral car parking charges is...er...parked - after mammoth meeting

A huge vote on plans to bring in new parking charges in Wirral has been pushed back despite an incredibly long council meeting.

The meeting was set up after Wirral Council's Environment and Transport Committee voted to bring in new parking charges at off-street car parks last month, including sites in Bromborough, Bebington, Irby, Hoylake and New Brighton.

Coastal locations which are also currently free were included in the plans - again, this included sites in New Brighton and Hoylake, as well as Leasowe and West Kirby.

The June meeting also voted to standardise the fees every council-run car park in Wirral would charge, choosing the rate of £1 per hour for the first four hours, with a maximum charge of £5 for a full day of parking.

But the decision was up for review at last night's key committee meeting, made up of a different group of councillors, after Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors used the so-called 'call in' mechanism.

However, after a five-and-a-half-hour long debate, the committee agreed to adjourn the meeting without a decision being made.

Councillors from across Wirral's political spectrum must now agree a new date on which to make the decision, which could be to defer it to a full council meeting, the Policy and Resources Committee or the Environment and Transport Committee.

At last month's meeting, Tory councillors voted against the plans on parking charges, arguing they did not have enough information to make a decision, while the sole Liberal Democrat councillor Allan Brame abstained.

But Labour votes, along with that of Green Party councillor Chris Cooke, were enough to get the motion through.

Yesterday, several passionate pleas were made on both sides of the argument.

Conservative councillor Simon Mountney said the displaced parking, where people park in residential areas to avoid parking charges, as well as a loss of amenity new parking charges would cause would be "catastrophic" for the borough.

He added: "The potential loss of business income [due to this decision] could potentially push businesses over the edge."

Focusing on one area of the borough near to his ward, Cllr Phil Gilchrist, who leads the Lib Dem group on the council, said: "Most who talk to me about car parking charges say they will kill, destroy or finish Bromborough."

But Green and Labour councillors disagreed.

A key point of their argument was that the move to increase parking charges and bring more in was passed by a full meeting of Wirral Council on March 1.

It accounted for £1m of income to the authority and was a key saving agreed to in the budget, June's committee was simply tasked with how to achieve this saving.

Labour councillor Liz Grey, who chaired the June meeting which voted for the parking charges plan, stressed other cuts which could be made if the proposal was rejected.

Cllr Grey said: "We know full well what the alternatives could be.

"The alternative proposals, were we to continue to subsidise parking, were: closure of leisure centres, axing lollipop men and women, getting rid of our golf land, closing the art gallery, closing public toilets and compulsory redundancies."

Green Party councillor Chris Cooke said there was also an "equality issue". He added: "Why should all have to pay for the minority who regularly use municipal car parks?"

Cllr Cooke said that 25% of people in Wirral do not have a car, with the figure even higher at 40% in Birkenhead.

According to Cllr Cooke, this suggested that allowing parking to be free meant the least well off were in effect paying for the parking of others, given the costs to the council of maintaining car parks.