Shane Croucher

Plans to introduce on-street pay and display parking in Lincoln have been rejected by a Lincolnshire County Council scrutiny committee.

The council has to take over parking enforcement powers from Lincolnshire Police, and to help pay the £1 million needed for this, pay and display parking across the centre of Lincoln was proposed.

Under the plans, streets in city and town centres across Lincolnshire would have installed pay and display parking meters for up to 500 short stay bays.

However, a Lincolnshire County Council Highways, Transport & Technology Scrutiny Committee meeting on June 27 opposed this way of funding the project.

Councillor Eddie Strengiel, Conservative member for Lincoln Birchwood, said he’s “fully against it”.

Strengiel proposed the committee rejects the specific pay and display plans, which form part of the wider move to Civil Parking Enforcement. The committee supported this proposal.

In his forceful rebuttal, Strengiel said the council should “explore other ways” of funding.

He said that while he understands the difficulty and need to find cash in “these austere times”, the Bailgate area in particular would be hit hard, which is already “suffering its own austere times”.

Councillor Robert Parker, the Leader of the Labour group at the County Council and member for Lincoln West, spoke at the committee meeting, though he isn’t a member, arguing that the parking charges would have a negative effect on local businesses.

“One of the responsibilities of the council is to give competitive advantage to businesses,” Parker said. “We need to be protecting businesses as much as we can.”

He added that City of Lincoln Council could suffer a direct loss of revenue from its own pay and display car park near the city centre.

Councillor Kevin Clarke, Labour member for Lincoln Boultham, said residents as well as businesses will be “inconvenienced”.

He argues that the city centre’s surrounding residential areas, some of which benefit from free parking, would be “chocablock with cars” trying to avoid parking charges.

Lincolnshire County Council has a “duty to provide residents with free parking to all areas in Lincoln”, he said, if pay and display charges were introduced in the city centre.

— Later update: The authority is now looking for alternative ways to fund the £1.2 million annual running costs of Civil Parking Enforcement, which it takes on from the police.

On-street parking charges had been proposed as the best alternative in itself, after the county and district councils couldn’t reach an initial agreement last year which would have seen joint operation and funding towards the service.

Councillor William Webb, Executive Member for Highways and Transport, said:

“Whilst other councils in the country are funding their new Civil Parking Enforcement (CPE) responsibility via Pay and Display, we fully accept the committee’s decision today and understand the concerns about implementing this in Lincolnshire.

“However, the county council still needs to find £1.2 million each year to run CPE.

“Potential income from fines is only estimated to recoup less than two-thirds of that, so Pay and Display had been calculated to provide the difference. We now need to find this remainder from elsewhere.”

Photo: Samantha Fisher for The Lincolnite | Related Report: BBC Lincolnshire

Care service users in Lincoln may soon be in control of who delivers the care they need, if new proposals are accepted by Lincolnshire County Council.

In what’s being billed as “personalisation” of care services, recipients of care will have “personal budgets” to spend on the care they need.

Support will be given to individuals wanting to choose their own care. The authority also said it will still source care for those who don’t want to do it themselves.

Lincolnshire County Council argues this will give people more freedom and choice over how they receive care. The budget amount will be set after a detailed assessment of the individual’s needs.

The plans will be put before the council’s Executive on July 5 for approval.

Lincolnshire’s eight care homes were earmarked for closure earlier this year, five by September and three by next March, providing their service users can find care elsewhere.

Savings of £3.3million would be made if the new proposals are implemented. It’s hoped a market will emerge that will meet the service needs of the area.

A problem may arise if providing certain services isn’t commercially viable for a business, leaving vulnerable people without access to vital care.

Peter Duxbury, Executive Director of Adults’ and Children’s Services at Lincolnshire County Council, said: “We would be keen to support services. If we come across an area left purely to the market, the service won’t develop. We would look at ways of trying to make that happen.

“So there is a degree of market intervention in this. We see our role as a responsible commissioner of services, that may include elements of us supporting part of the market and to create parts of the market.”

The County Council is trying to stimulate a care service market by encouraging care staff who are losing their jobs at the closing care homes to set up their own enterprises.

Richard Collins, Head of Adult Commissioning at the council, said during the staff consultation over the care home closures there had been “lots of interest” in this.

He said: “We’ve got a variety of things we’re offering to individuals. Some of it is the standard stuff in terms of outgoing people, like going through an agency, and we’ve also got some wellbeing stuff in there.

“Most of it is around training. We’re asking people to tell us what it is they want, so we can develop it. We’re looking at how we can support with business advice, and some very specialist stuff about how to set up some of these businesses.”

Councillor Marianne Overton, Leader of the Independents on the county council, said there are “some things I am quite pleased about”, but expressed concern at parts of the proposals.

She said: “I do see there are already problems arising from individuals coming to me. The difficulty with personalised budgets is that it is intended to increase choice, but what we see on the ground is that it can actually have the reverse effect.

“We have already seen a number of day care centres closing. Without the security of a contract they find it difficult to employ staff and to maintain service at a consistent and reliable level.

“If you rely on personal budgets it can start to fall apart.”