It is my pleasure to welcome you to Brighton & Hove City Council’s Parking Annual Report for 2023 to 2024.
This year’s report details what has happened within Parking Services over the last financial year, along with an overview of the financials including how the income feeds back into Transport related initiatives.
Parking and traffic management is an important public service, which provides access and safety benefits for pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, and the wider community. Those benefits include maintaining road safety and access to jobs, goods and services and ensures better access for all to the city including for blue badge holders and wheelchair access along pavements and crossing.
As the Cabinet Member for Transport, Parking & the Public Realm, I am keenly aware that parking can be a highly emotive subject that has a significant impact on the daily lives of our residents, businesses and the millions of visitors we welcome to our city each year. We are proud to host a wide range of events, large and small which is one of the joys of living here. Events like Brighton Pride, Brighton Marathon and Brighton Half Marathon can attract hundreds of thousands of visitors over a weekend, almost doubling the city’s population. It takes months of planning to ensure that cars are only parked in the right places. That there are clear suspension signs in place advising where not to park and that vehicles are relocated if necessary. Our parking teams are critical to managing these peaks in demand for parking and ensuring visitors can access these events so that they can take place safely and smoothly for all to enjoy.
We recognised that Parking Zones and tariffs had ‘evolved’ over the past two decades; with new controlled parking zones added expanding from the centre over this period. Tariffs have increased, most notably over the last three years (2020 to 2023) where price raises were significantly above inflation, with further increases baked in. It was time to step back and review. To see how parking fitted together across the city; how it might be simplified and better serve the city. This is why we commissioned a comprehensive and holistic Parking Review. A Parking Review for a fairer parking service to better serve the city, its residents, businesses, visitors and environment. Significant progress on our comprehensive Parking Review took place in 2023 to 24.
Parking Services continues to be at the forefront of new and relevant parking initiatives. This includes the installation of more public EV charge points to keep up with the growing demand in the city and from our visitors and businesses for EV vehicles whilst supporting our commitment for the council to be carbon neutral.
Our parking service has also been focussing on social value with its newly procured enforcement contract a great example of how the council is working with suppliers to ensure we get the best value for our supplier contracts.
Thank you for taking the time to read the Annual Report which we hope you find interesting.