Nottingham Workplace Parking Levy

Bircham Dyson Bell is acting for Nottingham City Council in its ground-breaking Workplace Parking Levy, a scheme to tackle the anticipated growth in congestion across the Nottingham conurbation.

Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) is a charge on the provision of workplace parking places to be paid by the employer to the Council.  The Transport Act 2000 provides local authorities with powers to introduce road user charging (RUC) and WPL schemes, but it is RUC in the form of ‘congestion charging’ that has dominated Government policy and public consciousness.  Nottingham is the first authority to seek to implement a WPL scheme.

It is estimated that congestion costs the Nottingham economy around £160 million each year.  The WPL scheme is designed to address this problem.  The scheme will place a charge on the use of workplace parking places in the Nottingham City area, paid annually by employers who must obtain a WPL licence.  There will be exemptions from charging for disabled persons’ parking places, emergency and NHS frontline services premises, and small businesses, leaving 500 larger employers liable to pay the charge.

In addition to encouraging employers to reduce the amount of free workplace parking places and to promote the use of alternative modes of transport for travelling to work, WPL will provide the Council with a source of revenue – approximately £14 million each year – for funding a step change in the provision of public transport.  In particular, WPL will provide a substantial element of the local funding for the two planned extensions of Nottingham’s tram system.
 
The Nottingham WPL scheme has been a complex and innovative project with a number of challenges to be overcome.  The authorising legislation leaves it to the local authority to decide precisely how a WPL scheme will operate.  Whilst drafting the legal order for the WPL scheme we were therefore also heavily involved in the operational design of the scheme, crafting a blueprint for how the WPL provisions in the Transport Act 2000 could be put into practice in a legally robust and enforceable manner.  Part of this process involved discussions with the Department for Transport concerning not only the scheme proposals but also the production of the national regulations necessary before the scheme could start.
 
As there is no precedent for authorising a WPL scheme a key part of our role has been to design a legally sound authorisation process, and guide Nottingham City Council through it.  As WPL is a controversial scheme, engagement with the public and key stakeholders was crucial.  Widespread consultation was undertaken in 2007 and as part of this exercise we designed an innovative one-week ‘public examination’ of the proposals to provide enhanced public participation and allow for independent scrutiny.  We also advised on the dissemination of public information and liaison with the press and key stakeholders.  We then devised the process by which the Council made its legal order in 2008 and applied for confirmation of it by the Secretary of State for Transport.
 
In July 2009 the Secretary of State confirmed the WPL legal order, opening the way for the WPL scheme to proceed.  The Council will introduce the WPL licensing scheme in October 2011, although charging for licences will not begin until April 2012.
 
Nottingham serves as a leading example of how demand management measures such as WPL can be combined with ambitious public transport initiatives to tackle growing congestion locally.  In an era of tightened public spending, the WPL scheme will provide a valuable source of local revenue for Nottingham.  It is likely to set a precedent that other local authorities will look to follow.