Following a ruling last month that local authorities cannot use parking charges to increase revenue, Councillor Brian Silvester has questioned whether Cheshire East Council is "flouting the law with their £10.5m profit on parking charges".
A group of residents from North London were so outraged at Barnet Council's huge increase in the cost of Residents Parking Permits, from £40 to £100, and Visitor's Vouchers, from £1 to £4, that they decided to take legal action in 2011. Last week they won their high court battle when judges ruled the Council's price increases were unlawful.
Following this decision Willaston and Rope Ward UKIP Councillor Brian Silvester starting looking into the situation in Cheshire East.
He said "Cheshire East Council has made a profit of £10.5m from car parking charges since it was formed in 2009. I have been informed that the surplus goes to the General Fund and is not ring fenced. The 1984 Road Traffic Regulation Act – "does not authorise the authority to use its powers to charge residents for parking in order to raise surplus revenue for other than transport purposes".
"If all the profit goes to the General Fund there is no way of knowing whether it is being used illegally to pay for other services. Many motorists will think they are being ripped off to pay for none transport services which is not legal. I have written to the Cabinet Member for Finance, Cllr Raynes, asking him to provide evidence that all the £10.5 milllion surplus has been spent on transport purposes."
Councillor Peter Raynes, Cheshire East Council Cabinet member in charge of finance, responded: "It is simply wrong to say the Council has acted illegally over the use of parking revenues – and, as a former Deputy Leader of the Council, Cllr Silvester should know this. His figures are also greatly misleading.
"The Council has raised a total of £10.5m in net income from parking since 2009. However, only approximately £55,000 of this figure is from on-street residents parking schemes, which is ring-fenced and required to be spent on highways. The rest is not ring-fenced.
"Since 2009, the Council has invested almost £130m in maintaining and improving Cheshire East's roads. Moreover, in January (2013) we announced we are spending a further £23m on road improvements over the next two years.
"Improvements across the Borough have included repairing potholes, resurfacing work and major new road schemes to improve connectivity. The Council is also committed to delivering new major schemes including: the £27m Crewe Green Link Road South; Basford West spine road; Congleton link road and Poynton relief road.
"We are also on track to repairing 50,000 potholes across the Borough since January this year.
"Cheshire East publishes detailed financial information on a quarterly basis and both councillors and the public can see clearly how much we spend.
"This Council has shown time and time again its real commitment to investing to improve Cheshire East's roads. Cllr Silvester should be supporting these essential efforts rather than engaging in misleading political mischief making."
Last week the RAC Foundation announced that council's across the country make half a billion in parking profits. Figures analysed by the motoring research charity show the vast majority of local authorities in England generate a surplus from their parking activities.
In 2011-12, English councils had a total current account surplus of £565 million from their on and off street parking operations. This figure is a £54 million increase on the £511 million surplus seen in 2010-11.
The data, studied for the RAC Foundation by David Leibling, comes from the annual returns that councils make to the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The authority with the biggest income is Westminster Council in London which made a surplus of £41.6 million in 2011-12.
