Question
This question relates to the recent increase in parking fees at Dinton Pastures/California Country Park. Whilst the Council's need to increase income is accepted, the 55% increase in the concessionary annual parking permit fee seems excessive both by reference to other increases and the general rate of inflation. In his recent Press Release related to this, the Exec member for the Environment said "In terms of the car park increases, we have looked at country parks elsewhere and believe our recommended prices are broadly in line with them and would still represent amazing value for money". This was repeated in an email response to me when he said "I can assure you that we benchmarked our prices against a number of other country parks". I asked the member for a copy of the relevant benchmark data but did not receive it. I have, however, received it in response to a general request to the Council. Can the member please comment on why he believes that the increase to £112.50 for an annual concessionary season ticket is justified by the benchmark data which shows four comparators all of which are considerably cheaper than not only the proposed rate from January 2016 rate but also the existing 2015 rate? The comparator rates shown in the benchmark data are: Itchen Valley - £28.50, Danbury CP - £45, Great Notley £45, Hadley Park - £45.
Minutes:
Question
This question relates to the recent increase in parking fees at Dinton Pastures/California Country Park. Whilst the Council's need to increase income is accepted, the 55% increase in the concessionary annual parking permit fee seems excessive both by reference to other increases and the general rate of inflation. In his recent Press Release related to this, the Exec Member for the Environment said "In terms of the car park increases, we have looked at country parks elsewhere and believe our recommended prices are broadly in line with them and would still represent amazing value for money". This was repeated in an email response to me when he said "I can assure you that we benchmarked our prices against a number of other country parks". I asked the Member for a copy of the relevant benchmark data but did not receive it. I have, however, received it in response to a general request to the Council. Can the Member please comment on why he believes that the increase to £112.50 for an annual concessionary season ticket is justified by the benchmark data which shows four comparators all of which are considerably cheaper than not only the proposed rate from January 2016 rate but also the existing 2015 rate? The comparator rates shown in the benchmark data are: Itchen Valley - £28.50, Danbury CP - £45, Great Notley £45 and Hadley Park - £45.
Answer
Clearly behind all this my main aim is to ensure you and all the residents can continue to enjoy our valuable Country Parks with their many diverse attractions.
We do carry out benchmarking with a number of Country Park providers across the country. The benchmarking is informative and gives context to our decision making, but it does not restrict us in terms of making decisions for our own local context. A number of the benchmarked organisations, for example, offer their particular Country Park service on a subsidised basis. We are clear that our Country Parks must be self-financing totally so as not to compete with the provision of our statutory services in this ongoing time of reducing Government Grants.
As part of this and to this end, we took the view that a season ticket should offer value for money for frequent visitors but that it should be a fair price compared with other visitors. We also introduced a half year rate. At peak rate a person wishing to park regularly and visit for 1 hour only will only take 100 visits to repay the ticket price, which is just less than twice a week over the whole year. Once the visitor spends more than one hour on site the number of visits to repay drops considerably, for two hours the number drops to about 50.
Season tickets still offer good value for money and will contribute significantly to the cost of the provision of the Borough’s Country Parks and Nature Reserves and we can continue fully to support these local gems.
Supplementary Question
Do I understand you correctly then, Angus, that whereas the impression given in e-mails to me, and in the press release, was that the new price was comparable to elsewhere in fact you are saying that there are other factors that were taken into account?
Supplementary Answer
What I am saying is that I did some research myself after your e-mails with some of those sites and it is very clear if you look at their overall revenue budgets that they are supporting the country parks which as I said in my reply unfortunately is something we just cannot afford to do. So we have had to find a framework that makes the country parks self-sustaining and the main one for this, obviously, is the car park charges. We don’t charge for anything else once you get in the country parks.