Woking Council to increase parking charges

The Woking Borough Council is to increase the cost of parking in the town's car parks despite the Conservatives boasting just 8 months ago that they had frozen parking charges and would not increase them in 2016.

Before the last Woking Council elections in May, the ruling Tories boasted about freezing parking charges and promised that car parking charges in Woking would not be increased under the Conservatives.

A Tory leaflet stated that, "The Conservative administration is pleased that thorough careful financial management it can avoid increasing parking costs for residents and visitors to the town." The leaflet went on to say, "Keeping car parking charges as low as possible helps make the town centre more accessible to more people."

However, at Thursday's Full Council the Tories pushed through plans to increase parking charges and voted down a Lib Dem amendment - by 14 votes to 13 - that would have frozen parking charges.

In 2017, Woking Council will add 10p an hour to the cost of parking and increase the daily charge from £10 to £11 in the town centre's car parks.

Lib Dem Group Leader on Woking Borough Council, Councillor Will Forster, said:

"I think the Conservatives are at last openly admitting their failure to run Woking Council properly. They have effectively said they cannot properly run the Council's finances, are putting parking charges up as a result and going against what residents are likely to have taken from their election literature that parking charges would be maintained at current levels."

"The Lib Dems and I think it is appalling that the Council will hike parking charges and take half a million pounds more off local motorists. Motorists should not be treated as a cash cow and be charged even more to park in Woking town centre."