Workplace Parking Levy

Overview

It is clear that if the council is to meet challenging decarbonisation, air quality and health ambitions, implement COVID-19 recovery plans, and deliver on people’s travel needs in a rapidly growing city, substantial additional funding will be needed to deliver our ambitious transport plans.

A workplace parking levy for Leicester would provide transformational investment, with total funding of some £450m, to help deliver our ambitions for a well connected, environmentally friendly, and affordable citywide bus, cycling and walking network.

A levy would support delivery of a 10-year annual investment programme, whilst reducing reliance on uncertain Government grants. Building on the success of major investments through our Connecting Leicester and Transforming Cities Fund transport initiatives, a workplace parking levy would further support delivery of:

• A transformational 8-year ‘Bus Service Improvement Plan’ through the new ‘Leicester Buses Partnership’. Over 400 high quality electric tram-like buses will be the norm by 2030 operating on 25 ‘Mainlines’ services across city neighbourhoods and five express ‘Greenline’ commuter services including three cross city links to six Park & Ride sites and two new orbital services.

• A first-class travel experience for the bus user with bus priority on key routes delivering reliable services at a good frequency, integrated timetables and multi-operator digital ticketing across services and quality waiting facilities with real time displays.

• Affordable bus fares with discounts for elderly, disabled, young and unemployed people and the ability for all travellers to get the ‘best fare’ on all journeys across the city.

• A world-class citywide network of cycleways, for long and short trips, that will link current routes in the city centre directly with, and between, local neighbourhoods.

These ambitious plans — included in the Leicester Transport Plan (draft) — would deliver early sustainable transport benefits to both residents and businesses across the whole of the city rather than investing in large and expensive fixed transport systems with long delivery timeframes such as a tram.

As part of the development of our case for a workplace parking levy the council has worked closely with Nottingham City Council. Their successful workplace parking levy scheme has operated for nearly ten years and has seen major transport benefits for local people without any significant impact noted on the economy or businesses.

Detailed studies have been carried out by De Montfort University into the need for a workplace parking levy and its economic impact, and environmental, transport and health impacts have also been assessed.

Extensive consultation has already been carried out involving hundreds of local people and businesses. We have refined our thinking and propose what we believe to be a fair and equitable scheme with additional safeguards such as exempting blue badge holders and measures to deal with any parking displacement.

Why your views matter

We now want to hear from you on our detailed business case for a workplace parking levy, which will have an extensive 12-weeks consultation. The scheme would require Government approval. Close working with local businesses during 2022 would be carried out to prepare for its introduction in 2023.

The workplace parking levy has the potential to help Leicester lead the way on global environmental challenges and transform the city into an outstanding place to live and work where high quality, user-friendly and affordable options for people to travel by bus, bike and foot are available across a growing city.

The benefits of investing in sustainable transport to bring about a reduction in traffic are easy to visualise as we see it during school holidays where a 10% reduction in peak morning traffic on some roads can make it much easier and healthier to get about in the city.