Liverpool to raise parking tariffs

Parking tariffs across Liverpool are set to rise as part of the city council’s plans to reduce its budget by £30m in the next financial year. On-street tariffs would rise by up to 20% while tariffs in eight of the council’s 11 car parks would rise by up to 25%.

This would be the first increase in parking tariffs in Liverpool since May 2008, which means charges have not kept in line with inflation since then, said the council. Besides which, on-street pay & display tariffs in the inner city centre and at some car parks were reduced in 2012.

The rise in parking charges would generate an additional £500,000 in 2020-21, the council estimates. It also plans to raise £1m by reassessing adult social care packages, involving a benefits check and means test financial assessment.

Liverpool’s Council Tax for 2020-21 is to rise by 3.99% in 2020/21, which will raise an extra £7.2m compared with 2019/20.

These are among a range of measures designed to plug the £30m shortfall. The proposals would see the “books balanced through a mix of cutting the costs of services, reducing demand and increasing income”, said the council.

Measures include: reducing the number of children in the most costly residential care by placing them in the council’s newly created children’s homes or in foster placements; redesign of customer services strategy and model; review and remodel the ICT service; creating a dedicated ‘edge of care’ team to reduce the number of teenagers coming into services and improve outcomes.

A consultation on the proposals is currently underway, and the council said final decisions would only be taken once responses have been fully considered.

The city council says it has £436m less to spend each year in real terms compared with 2020 – equivalent to a 63% – due to reductions in funding from central government.
Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, said: “This is my tenth budget leading the council and each year it gets harder to find the necessary savings to balance the books without impacting on frontline services, as many of the back office savings were made a long time ago.”