Lincoln parking charges to increase by 10p per hour

The City of Lincoln Council will increase its car parking charges by 10p per hour across the city, generating around £120,000 extra in revenue.

The charges for parking across 13 council managed car parks include Lucy Tower Street, Broadgate, City Hall and Tentercroft Street car parks.

The council approved the increase at its meeting on Tuesday, March 3, with the rises set to be enforced from April 1.

The majority of car parks will see the hourly rate change from £1.50 to £1.60. On weekends and bank holidays, Broadgate, Rosemary Lane, County Offices and Lincoln College Car Parks will charge £2.10 for up to two hours.

City of Lincoln Council Leader Ric Metcalfe said: “Parking is important to people. We don’t like putting charges up, but there has’t been an increase for two years. In that time our costs have gone up, we’re a council that has a duty to council tax payers so we have got to make our books balance.

“Multi-storey car parks have very high maintenance costs so we are only trying to keep our head above water. We expect to generate about £120,000 in additional revenue from the increase but that will soon be gobbled up by the additional costs we’d be incurring.

“If you compare our charges with NCP and with a lot of other comparable places you’ll find that our charges are very reasonable,” he said.

Steve Bird, Assistant Director for Communities and Street Scene, added: “The council seeks to balance the difficult issues of needing to generate income, while at the same time not wanting to impact negatively on trade in the city.

“We strive to provide quality services that give good value for money, and we know that from price comparisons with both other historic cities and private company parking providers in Lincoln we are managing to do this.

“We know from our research that many of the people using our car parks arrive from outside of the city but they don’t pay council tax here to support the service. This is a way of them giving something back to our infrastructure.”

The council recently approved an investment of £700,000 into Broadgate car park in Lincoln in order to modernise the city centre multi-storey. Work begins on that project on April 1.