Shrewsbury’s council has come under fire for appearing to help a private company profit from its own parking charges – which were this week given the go-ahead to increase.
The new scale of charges, which comes into force at the end of the month, will apply to all borough-owned short stay car parks AND the one it has just sold to Shrewsbury’s long-standing Morris Company in a £2.6m land deal.
Short stay parking at Bridge Street, St Austin’s and the Tannery will rise by 20p to £1.20 for up to an hour and by 30p to £2.50 for 1-2 hours.
Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council, whose cabinet backed the fee hike at a meeting on Monday, has signed a management contract with Morris & Co to apply the same charges to Barker Street Car Park until any redevelopment work begins.
But Morris & Co will pocket all of the profits from the site while paying a fixed amount to SABC to cover staffing and administration costs. Last year the car park, together with the one opposite in Bridge Street, raked in £300,148.
A spokesman for SABC said that Barker Street was the busier of the two sites, which both have 54 spaces, and its takings accounted for around 60 per cent of that figure.
However, it is understood that SABC stands to receive only a modest sum from the new ‘arrangement’ with Morris’s.
Assistant council manager Andy Goldsmith would not divulge any figures when contacted by the Chronicle.
He said: “The agreement with Morris Property is that they will adopt the borough council fees for the life of that car park and we will run it on their behalf. They get the income and will pay us a management fee.”
Councillor Jon Tandy said he did not think the car park should have been sold.
He will be raising the issue at the next full council meeting. “Basically I do not think that the council should be helping another company to make money out of the general public,” he said.
No one from Morris & Company was available to comment.
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