CALLS for a ‘bold’ plan to extend a proposed charge on Oxford’s employers for as much as £600 for every parking space they have outside offices have been quashed.

Plans for a Workplace Parking Levy in the ‘eastern arc’ of Oxford have been on the cards for several years, and could see employers charged between £400 and £600 for every car parking space they have at their office buildings once rolled out.

At Oxfordshire County Council’s extraordinary full meeting this week, Labour councillor Susanna Pressel called for the levy scheme ‘to be far more ambitious’ and cover a wider area, possibly the whole city.

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At the meeting, Ms Pressel said: “Why are we being so timid? What is stopping us from expanding the area of the workplace parking levy?

“It seems to be a worry about how businesses will react. If they are to pay the levy will they expect to be served by a better bus service in return? The answer is no.

She added: “If we bring in a much wider workplace parking levy we will all benefit from having less peak time traffic and better air quality. They understand the concept of a common good just as well as the rest of us.”

The Labour councillor said a similar scheme had been rolled out in Nottingham and brought in roughly £10m a year, used to fund on an electric bus network among other transport projects.

Labour city and county councillor Susanna Pressel

Labour city and county councillor Susanna Pressel

By contrast, she said the currently planned Oxford scheme would only be used to fund buses in the east of the city.

The council’s Conservative cabinet member for transport, Yvonne Constance, said the eastern arc was being targeted as it is where most of the large employers in the city are based, and where public transport services are the ‘least serviceable’.

Ms Constance said: “Because of congestion in that area the buses do not run as they ought to.”

Approximately as 8,000 parking spaces would be affected by the scheme.

Ms Constance said plans for the levy across the eastern arc could be brought forward for a consultation by the end of the year, with the possibility of the scheme starting in 2022 or 2023.

She was among 30 councillors who voted against Ms Pressel’s proposals for research into a wider zone, which lost out by a majority of one, as 29 councillors supported it.

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Some councillors expressed distaste for the existing Workplace Parking Levy scheme, including Tory councillors Kieron Mallon, who described it as a ‘tax on workers’.

Others like independent member Suzanne Bartington, said the Nottingham scheme which the Oxford one was copying had helped to create as many as 20,000 jobs in the city, as companies relocated there because of the draw of less traffic.

The levy is intended to encourage workers indirectly to use public transport, by charging their employers for parking spaces.

It feeds into a scheme called Connecting Oxford, which aims to improve public transport and reduce congestion on the roads.

Connecting Oxford also includes so-called bus gates: camera guarded roads which only buses can use.