By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter
There are fears hiking Gloucester car parking charges will further hurt trade in the city centre.
Gloucester City Council has agreed new plans to help plug a £1.5 million hole in the authority’s finances.
Leaders at North Warehouse say they were made aware of the “substantial” financial challenge after it was discovered in July this year.
They say the council has found itself in this position due to having no audited or unaudited accounts dating back from the cyber attack in 2021.
The authority has been relying on manually produced accounting records and finance reports after the cyber attack.
These were used to inform them of the financial health of the authority and were relied on to make important budget decisions during the previous administration and the current one.
To plug the gap, the council has agreed to increase parking charges in line with inflation from November, review the council’s fees and charges and review how to make more money while revisiting the business plans of Gloucester Guildhall, the city museum and Blackfriars Priory.
Conservative group deputy leader Sajid Patel (C, Barton and Tredworth) said the financial situation is “sad and very distressing”.
But he raised serious concerns over the impact a rise in parking charges will have on the city centre.
“It was only a few months ago Cllr [Terry] Pullen and the Labour group put forward a motion to freeze parking charges in Gloucester,” he told the council meeting on September 18.
“The overall majority supported that in this chamber and now look at what the Lib Dems are doing – they want to put the parking charges up.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, you’re killing the city centre, killing the businesses.
“Do what’s right, freeze the parking charges.
“Think about the people out there in this cost of living crisis. You want to encourage footfall into the city centre and get people out there.”
Councillor Sarah Sawyer (LD, Longlevens) said when she became cabinet member “her eyes watered” at the sight of the poor financial decisions made by the previous Conservative administration.
“They can’t just blame officers because there was some poor financial decision making happening,” she said.
“We wanted to put fees up at the budget council meeting but you all voted against it.”
She said the council found out about the overspend in July and went from talking about things they wanted to invest in to how to fix the situation.
Resources cabinet member Declan Wilson (LD, Hucclecote) told the meeting “the council has quite a substantial financial problem”.
He set out the actions the council will need to take to increase their reserves.
“We must increase our general fund balances – we cannot have a negative balance,” he said.
“We must deliver the savings in the plan. In addition we will look at recruitment.
“We will have to increase car parking charges because they are not covering their costs.”