Three days ago at Full Council, my Lib Dem group on Nottingham City Council voted to support the introduction of a Workplace Parking Levy in our city.

The scheme charges large employers with more than 10 parking spaces for every space they have.  The fee begins in 2010 at around £15 per month per space – less than a bus season ticket – and employers can choose whether to pass the fee onto employees or to pay it themselves. Around 500 employers will be subject to the fee and so far it looks like about 50% of them are planning to pass on the charge.  The money raised will mostly pay for the tram, but it will also provide for major renovation of our railway station, and help subsidize a number of bus routes that are not commercially viable but provide a vital service, including to major employers, the airport and the universities.

The scheme is not perfect. No-one else in the country has opted to try out this option from Labour’s 2000 Transport Act, which means it falls to Nottingham to test the waters. There are plenty of grey areas – how do you adequately distinguish between customer parking and staff parking at a supermarket, for example?  And perhaps most importantly, although all businesses with over 10 parking spaces pay the levy, not all of them benefit from the public transport infrastructure improvements they are funding.

But there are advantages.  The scheme is the only real option that can be up and running in two years – and if some better scheme arrives in a few years time with changing technology or changing legal frameworks, it can be closed down just as quickly.  The charge is mainly levied on commuters, while letting Nottingham’s shoppers in and out unaffected. It’s well placed to effect modal change – if you don’t want to pay it, find a way not to drive to work. And best of all, it’s clearly linked to our popular modern tram in the city.  Other cities have found themselves having to make a decision to charge motorists to fund unspecified future public transport improvements whilst ours is definitely going to pay for tram improvements hopefully starting in 2013.

You can read the full details of the scheme on Nottingham City Council’s website and, if you really want to, you can read my speech to Council on Nottingham Lib Dem’s website.