£1m for council raised from parking fees swallowed up by fixing roads costs

Parking charges may have brought Calderdale Council £1m surplus – but it will be swallowed up by highway and other related costs, councillors have heard.

As reported by the Courier, Calderdale Council’s annual financial report showed increased parking charges in some of the borough’s towns – Halifax, Brighouse and Hebden Bridge – had helped produce the surplus.

The increases have been bitterly contested in some of those areas and at a meeting of the council’s cabinet, a councillor asked if further planned increases in the council’s 2025-26 budgeting could be rethought.

Coun Howard Blagbrough (Con, Brighouse), Conservative group leader, said the surplus had helped the council’s neighbourhoods directorate reduce overspend on last year’s budget to £3.1m.

“Can the cabinet provide a detailed explanation of how the surplus income from parking charges was allocated within the neighbourhoods budgets?

“Furthermore, in light of this surplus, will the cabinet reconsider the additional £700,000 in further planned increases to parking charges which were approved in this year’s budget?

“Parking charges should not become a cash cow to address the council’s overspend,” he said.

Coun Silvia Dacre (Lab, Todmorden), cabinet member for Resources, said parking income can only be spent on parking services and the infrastructure for that, and on highway maintenance and infrastructure.

“Highways could swallow almost any excess of any income that we made by parking – I don’t think we’re in a position to accede to your suggestions,” she said.

Coun Dacre said it had already been agree in November to invest in new, more efficient pay-and-display machines, with the cost to be met from parking charges.