Council Leaders Drop New Car Park Fee Plans

Rother council leaders have cancelled plans to introduce new fees to free-to-use car parks.

On Monday (February 3), Rother District Council’s cabinet endorsed proposals for the authority’s 2025/26 budget, which will be put to a full council vote later this month.

These proposals, which include a 2.99 per cent council tax increase, were discussed by the authority’s overview and scrutiny committee.

While the scrutiny committee was supportive of the overall budget proposals, they also recommended the council abandon proposals to introduce parking fees to car parks which are currently free to use.

Speaking during the cabinet meeting, the scrutiny committee’s chairman Paul Osborne (Con) said:

“There was so much negative comment from residents, especially in Northiam and Sidley … [compared to] the potential tiny amount of income.

“We thought the negative publicity and the harm to the reputation of the council wasn’t worth the aggravation.”

The free-to-use car parks which had been set to be affected included: Beeching Close; Sidley; The Gorses; Richmond Road; Broad Oak Park; Little Common Rec; The Polegrove/Rye Salts; Northiam; Sedlescombe; and Hurst Green.

Charges were also set to be introduced at Bexhill Leisure Centre, as well as at the coach and lorry parking in Wainwright Road and the coach parking in Battle.

In considering the recommendation from overview and scrutiny, Cllr Christine Bayliss, cabinet member for regeneration and economic development, put forward a motion for the charges be dropped from the wider budget proposals.

Cllr Bayliss said:

“I think we’ve listened to the consultation, we’ve listened to the public. As the economic development lead on the cabinet, I have been lobbied by businesses in places like Sidley, for example, and you can see that this would be, at this stage, a backward step.”

But this view was not shared by Liberal Democrat cabinet member Kathryn Field.

Cllr Field said:

“I think there are equalities issues here. I think we should be charging for all of them or not charging for any of them; I don’t think we should be cherry picking between car parks in the district.

“Don’t forget we do have a carbon reduction target in this district. We want to reduce our carbon footprint and get to net zero by … 2030.

"I think we should be — and I am not alone here — discouraging the use of cars in our town centres, particular ly historic town centres where roads are tight and narrow and there is an awful lot of pollution and poor air quality.”

However, the motion was agreed by a majority vote. The overall proposals will soon go to a full council vote for adoption.

The remaining budget proposals include a 2.99 per cent council tax increase. If implemented, this would bring Rother‘s share of the annual bill for a Band D household to £210.65 — an increase of £6.11 on the current financial year.

The initial proposals also included planned savings and income generation totalling £1.176 million. This figure had included the new car parking charges, however.

When put together, the new car parking charges were expected to generate somewhere in the region of £74,000 in new income for the council.

Their removal from the budget proposals will bring the council’s total savings proposals for next year down to a little over £1.1 million.

These savings are offset by growth (i.e. increased costs) in other areas of council activity, which is expected to come to £540,639.

As a result, the council can expect a net savings position of around £561,785 — short of the authority’s £1.4 million target.

The proposals also include plans to draw £619,000 from reserves to balance the overall budget. This amount is equal to a deficit in the council’s spending. It is unclear if this deficit figure takes into account the savings proposals.