![[ABD Logo]](images/logo8050.gif)
The Association of British Drivers
Workplace Parking Tax
Working Parking Tax is another scam invented by the 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.
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.
Local authorities for & against workplace parking tax:
| 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.
Althought the idea of widespread workplace parking tax seems to be on hold at present, there is one particular area where it is rife —
Hospitals
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.
"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) |
