Edinburgh Workplace Parking Levy: 'Councillors must decide whether to spend £100,000 to survey car parks'

Councillors will have to approve spending £100,000 on consultants to undertake a survey of city car parks if they want to progress plans for a Workplace Parking Levy in Edinburgh, transport convener Scott Arthur has said.

Last year, the council’s transport and environment committee agreed to carry out a consultation exercise on a levy, despite Cllr Arthur urging a pause to investigate what it might mean for shift workers and the low paid.

A Workplace Parking Levy would mean companies being charged for providing their staff with parking spaces, but they could pass the charge on to the employees. Photo: Lisa Ferguson

A Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) could see employees having to pay as much as £650 a year to park at work if businesses choose to pass the cost on to their staff. Previous estimates have suggested a levy could bring in up to £12 million a year for the council to reinvest in public transport and active travel, while helping to achieve its goal of reducing congestion and cutting car journeys by 30 per cent by 2030.

Nottingham is the only local authority in the UK to have introduced a WPL. It began in 2012 and has helped pay for an extension to Nottingham’s tram route and a revamp of the railway station.

Edinburgh’s consultation, which took place between November 2023 and February 2024 attracted more than 2,600 individual responses and over 30 from businesses and organisations.

Cllr Arthur said: “There are mixed views - it seems a lot of people don’t think a city-wide scheme would work; there’s talk of a zoned scheme in the city; or perhaps one that just focused on the city centre. And some employers said the rules weren’t entirely clear to them - and that’s because, to a large extent, the council has still to define how the scheme would work in Edinburgh.

“I’ve always been sceptical about the role a Workplace Parking Levy would play in reducing congestion, based on observations in Nottingham, but the income it would generate is very attractive.”

And he said in the consultation exercise people had put forward a wide range of suggestions on how the money should be spent. Ideas included season ticket loans for public transport, a free shuttle bus from key transport hubs to workplaces, more electric vehicle charging points, fare discounts and expansion on the tram network.

But Cllr Arthur said he was still concerned about the impact of a WPL on shift workers, how it would affect people on lower incomes and a range of issues raised by unions

He said: “It’s difficult for me to support the WPL moving to the next stage without seeing more clarity on these three points.

“To proceed to the next stage, councillors will have to allocate £100,000 for a consultant to undertake survey work on car parks right across the city. I’m reluctant to spend that £100,000 before we see how some of those key questions are going to be answered.”

The consultants would also develop the WPL proposal and produce an environment and economic impact assessment.