Labour and Independent Administration does U-Turn on Evening and Sunday Parking!
In an extraordinary twist, Cheshire East's Labour/Independent Coalition has retained the introduction of parking charges in towns across the Borough during the evenings and on Sundays that they actively opposed during earlier consultations on the Transport Plan.
The Transport Plan is endorsed by Council Leader Sam Corcoran (Labour Leader) and Cllr Brian Roberts (Lab), cabinet member for highways has suggested that these charges would only be considered when a full parking review of all towns had been undertaken and would only be in some areas.
But the Labour/Independent controlled administration will face furious opposition from many of its own councillors, who always opposed rises in car parking tariffs under the past Conservative administration.
In addition, election campaign pledges to bring forward equitable car parking charges across the borough appear to have "fallen by the wayside" as the new administration begins to understand the actual costs of maintaining car parks together with the strange, legally binding anomalies that mean that some towns remain exempt from car parking charges - interestingly it is the Council Leader's own town of Sandbach that benefits most from these historic rights.
Cllr Janet Clowes (Conservative Group Leader) stated; "We started the consultation process to update the Transport Plan in 2018 which was repeated later in the year because we made significant changes as a result, that required further discussion with the public".
"The real irony of this situation is that we specifically reviewed the issue of evening and Sunday parking charges last Spring following the vehement opposition of Cllr Corcoran and the Labour Party, who referred to it to it as "paying to pray"! Despite their pre-election fervour, at some point over the summer, the new Cabinet have either refused to remove this policy from the draft or have actively reinstated it.
"We know that car parking charging is an issue that concerns all residents for different reasons but, as the Conservatives recognised from the Consultations last year, this is a step too far and as such we will be opposing this element of the Transport Plan."