MOTORISTS contributed more than £4m to council coffers by using the city’s car parks, a report says.

The figures, published by the RAC Foundation, come after Oxford City Council announced it would be charging up to 30p more an hour for its car parks.

The foundation reported that the city council made a £4.1m surplus in 2013/14 from car park charges – a four-year high.

The surplus refers only to off-street parking – the city’s designated car parks – and was calculated by the foundation from details submitted to the Department of Communities and Local Government by the local authority.

Council leader Bob Price said major projects had led to the decision to increase charges. He said: “We are in the middle of a huge project with the Westgate and the car park at Oxpens and we are also in the middle of revising Redbridge Park-and-Ride, two really significant projects.

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“More generally car park charges are designed not just to be a revenue generator but to encourage people to use park-and-rides and other methods of transport when coming into the city centre.”

The council said that the surplus had been spent on a variety of capital programmes, which included £372,000 to resurface many city car parks and £97,000 to waterproof Gloucester Green underground car park.

It said the surplus is also being used to fund major on-going infrastructure projects, such as the Oxpens car parking enhancements at a cost of £3.3m and the proposed Seacourt Park-and-Ride expansion estimated to cost £2m.

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In the city council’s proposed budget, parking charges will go up at selected car parks across the city.

The cost of parking at Union Street, off Cowley Road, is set to rise by 20p to £1.40 for an hour and by 30p to £13.40 for more than eight hours.

Charges at Alexandra Courts, Port Meadow, Hinksey Park, and Cutteslowe Park are set to go up by 10p an hour in April.

Businessman Clinton Pugh who runs Cafe Coco, Kazbar and Cafe Tarifa on Cowley Road, said the council was abandoning businesses.

He said: “All of the car parks are too expensive, prices go up too far and it puts people off coming into the city.

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“There is no strategy for transport in Oxford other than to stop people coming in.

“To put up the prices shows they do not care about business. They have raised all this money last year and just want more.

“Half of the problem with the council is that they are not always run efficiently as a business.”

Graham Jones, spokes-man for Oxford traders group ROX, also said high parking prices are unfair on businesses.

He said “I am again shocked by this because Oxford is difficult to get into and to hear of a rise in parking charges is dreadful.

“All the market towns have free parking and it means it is not a level playing field.

“The council has to consider those coming in and using cars are those coming in for more serious shopping.

“The bus service does a brilliant job for commuters but many customers need to use a car.”

But Rose Hill resident Donald Young, who regularly uses car parks in the city, said: “People may say they think the car parking fees are a bit exorbitant but at the end of the day if you do not want to pay you do not need to use them.

“I have no objections to the cost going up.

Oxford East MP Andrew Smith said: “I get remarkably few complaints on the doorstep about city parking charges. Maybe people are just resigned to them being so high. “The council is between a rock and a hard place here, because with a 49 per cent cut in government grant over the last four years, they don’t have room for manoeuvre financially. “They do though need to be careful about the impact on Oxford’s attractiveness as a shopping centre.”

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