Nottingham City Council has announced an update to its Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) operating model, in response to evolving travel behaviours and flexible working practices.
The delegated decision, which includes an increase in the WPL staffing budget, is aimed at ensuring the scheme remains fit for purpose in the post-pandemic business environment.
The recovery from Covid-19 has seen a shift in travel behaviours, with more flexible and hybrid patterns of working being adopted across many business sectors. This has resulted in daily variations in employee travel behaviours when commuting to their employers’ Nottingham premises, leading to a more dynamic and variable WPL liability.
The council has recognised the need for change to respond to the embedding of hybrid and flexible working by employees in the “new normal” world.
Peak period parking is now consolidated into fewer days of the week, meaning that increased resources are required to provide the same amount of compliance activity as pre-pandemic.
The updated WPL operating model will introduce new roles to deliver an “intelligence-led” approach, which will enable much greater team visibility aimed at delivering speedier employer compliance and securing and improving income generation.
The business rationale is to introduce a new role of WPL Support Officer, who will be directed to significantly increase the number of visual inspections for the WPL and WPC schemes across the board.
The cost of this decision is £82,113.
The WPL scheme has a current income budget of £9.047m.
The WPL Manager and NET manager have scheduled 19,100 parking spaces at a cost of £522 each – totalling £9.970m. By period 2, forecasting is indicating that over £10m is achievable. Income is likely to stay stable or increase with better compliance and management.
The decision was signed and dated on 28/06/2023 by Angela Kandola, PH for Highways, Transport, Planning, and Sajeeda Rose, Corporate Director of Growth & City Development.
The council has considered the risk of doing nothing with the current establishment, which would lead to increased non-compliance with the WPL scheme, missed income-generating opportunities, and potential formal legal compliance action. This would significantly diminish the WPL team’s ability to conduct proactive activity.
The WPL scheme applies across the whole of the City Council’s administrative boundary. Consultations were held with the WPL team, and feedback was unanimously positive. The Major Programmes Finance team, who manage the NET model, have been engaged and understand the proposals and can see the financial benefits to the NET model in the longer term.
The decision is subject to Call In, with the expiry date set for 05/07/2023.
