Council announce parking charge increase across Southampton

The authority has announced that on-road parking across 44 busy roads in the city will increase in price from September 30.

These roads include Bedford Place, London Road and Commercial Road and the new charges will see drivers have to pay an extra 30 pence for an hour and extra 50p for four hours.  

Steven Vallender, 66, drives from Bournemouth to Southampton once a month to go shopping.

Steven Vallender, 66, labelled the increase in prices "disgusting" (Image: NQ) Reacting, he said: “That’s disgusting – high streets are already at breaking point and now the council are giving people more reason to steer clear of the city.

“Those fees are just too high. With the cost of living people and energy prices through the last couple of years I can’t believe the council would do this.

“They are supposed to be bringing shoppers to the city centre not sending them away.”

While parking for half an hour has stayed the same, parking for an hour has increased from £2.50 to £2.80, an hour and a half has gone up from £4.00 to £4.40.

The largest hikes are parking for two hours and four hours which did cost £5.50 and £8.00 will now cost £6.00 and £8.50 respectively.

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Conservative councillor, Jeremy Moulton said that he thought Labour need to be very careful in hiking up parking charges.

Cllr Moulton continued: “Higher charges may end up costing the council money if it pushes people into private car parks or results in people going outside of Southampton to shop or even businesses relocating.”

The councillor said that instead of trying to ‘milk people for more money’ he would prefer the council to support local businesses, so the authority raises more in business rates.

He continued: “There are also those working for large corporate businesses whose employers do not provide parking – we had HSBC move out of the city a few years ago.

“If the council want to attract these big companies to the city they need to make sure there is parking for staff at a reasonable rate.”

Ron Crease, 80 (Image: NQ) Southampton resident, Ron Crease, 80 said: “I think the city council do seem to have a war on motorists.

“Its slowly becoming harder to be a driver in this city – it will be like London soon.”

The cabinet member for environment and transport at Southampton City Council, Eamonn Keogh has explained what the additional money will be used for.

Cllr Keogh said: “The council’s parking tariffs are subject to review to ensure that they continue to manage the demand of vehicles within parking bays and to help drivers consider alternative means of travel.

“These small tariff changes only affect the car parks listed and the City Centre Inner Zone pay & display tariffs.

“The additional revenues can be used to support our improvements to highways assets including Itchen Bridge, Northern Bridge, and our home to school transport programme.”