Working Parking Tax is another scam invented by the Labour government to extort yet more money from drivers. They propose to force those with a car parking space at work to pay a levy of between £400 and £1000 per year.

Anyone who parks at work will know that car parking already causes many companies administrative problems. The proposed tax will be impossible to enforce fairly, and will be as unpopular as the poll tax.

The ABD has learned that it is not just commuters who will be forced to pay. Prior to abandoning the whole idea, Birmingham City Council admitted that in order to prevent commuters parking their cars on side streets instead of company parking spaces, the council would introduce residents parking schemes in all residential areas adjacent to business areas. Residents would be forced to pay a fee for these schemes. The whole scheme is just another devious stealth tax.

A survey in April 2001 by the Institution of Civil Engineers showed that support for workplace parking charges by local councils is falling, with only 8% of local authorities backing the idea.

It is also known as ‘Workplace Parking Levy’ (because they would rather you didn't think of it as a tax).

“A tax on jobs”
Peter Beynon, Conservative candidate, Bridge Ward, Nottingham, May 2011

Local authorities for & against workplace parking tax:
2010 — Daily Telegraph
For Against
Bristol
Nottingham
Portsmouth
Southampton
South Somerset
York
 not stated
2001 — Institution of Civil Engineers
For Against
Bristol, Cambridge, Chester, Derbyshire, Dudley, Durham, Edinburgh (£2), Fulham, Leeds, Hammersmith, Maidstone, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Reading Birmingham (Sept 2000, but seem to change their mind often)
Solihull, Walsall

If your local authority is not listed, please find out their intentions and let us know.


 
Only Nottingham has yet been granted powers to introduce this, and plans to do so in 2010. Please see our Nottingham page for more information and details of a petition you can sign.
 
Althought the idea of widespread workplace parking tax is only just emerging from the shadows, there is one particular area where it is rife —
 

Hospitals

Some hospitals demand a Work Place Parking Tax in all but name. Worse still, it's not just staff who have to pay, patients and visitors are forced to pay too.
Anyone visiting a friend or relative in hospital is likely to have come across extortionate parking charges. The ABD deplores such charges which exist partly as profiteering on the part of the hospital authority, and partly due to the hospital authority sucking up to the local council on 'green transport plans'.
The chicanery is yet another of Labour's discriminatory stealth taxes. A means of increase funding to the NHS without actually increasing national insurance — only drivers are forced to pay the extra tax.
In some areas, hospital staff are also forced to pay extortionate charges. In addition parking spaces have been removed in some hospitals, and planning permission denied for new car parks. Staff and visitors then park on local roads, residents complain about the parking, and the council (delighted that their devious plan has worked) slap double yellow lines everywhere. Staff (many of them women working unusual hours) then have to park even further away, compromising their personal safety.
Meanwhile sick people in hospital wonder why they don't get many visitors.
The ABD calls for all hospital parking charges to be scrapped entirely. It is deplorable that people visiting the sick and injured have to pay for parking.
 

Related Pages

ABD Press Releases on Workplace Parking Tax

"The charges are necessary to fund the improvements we've made —
we have spent £1m already and still have more to do"
John Rostill
Chief Executive
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust
Worcester News
(Date uncertain as 'thisis' websites can't get their act together)