The Cabinet has decided to proceed with Civil Parking Enforcement in Fenland, without introducing off-street or on-street parking charges.

URL: https://www.fenland.gov.uk/localgov/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?ID=1125

Decision Maker: Cabinet

Outcome: Recommendations Approved

Is Key Decision?: No

Is Callable In?: No

Purpose: 1.    To provide members with updated implementation and operational running costs for Civil Parking Enforcement along with an updated timeline following the previous Cabinet paper on 21 July 2025. It is important to note that the estimated costs contained within this report have been based on the 2021 sign and line survey data with current contract prices used to determine the estimated cost. Prices were obtained at the end of February 2026 and are valid for 90 days following which they would be subject to potential price increases. 2.    To obtain a member steer on whether to proceed with the implementation of CPE having due regard to the updated implementation and running costs and associated go live timeline referenced in schedules 10.3, 10.5 and 10.5 of this report. 3.    To advise members of the CPCA’s conditional offer for the CPE funding grant extension. 4.    To provide members with an overview of any known financial and legal implications associated with implementing CPE to enable an informed decision.

Content: 1.    To provide members with updated implementation and operational running costs for Civil Parking Enforcement along with an updated timeline following the previous Cabinet paper on 21 July 2025. It is important to note that the estimated costs contained within this report have been based on the 2021 sign and line survey data with current contract prices used to determine the estimated cost. Prices were obtained at the end of February 2026 and are valid for 90 days following which they would be subject to potential price increases. 2.    To obtain a member steer on whether to proceed with the implementation of CPE having due regard to the updated implementation and running costs and associated go live timeline referenced in schedules 10.3, 10.5 and 10.5 of this report. 3.    To advise members of the CPCA’s conditional offer for the CPE funding grant extension. 4.    To provide members with an overview of any known financial and legal implications associated with implementing CPE to enable an informed decision. Members considered the Implementation of On and Off-Street Parking Enforcement in Fenland report presented by Councillor Mrs French.   Members made comments, asked questions and received responses as follows: ·         Councillor Tierney said this should have happened years ago but had not because Cambridgeshire County Council clearly did not want it to. He found it extraordinary that they would let signs and lines reach an illegal state and then refuse to spend money to rectify them. There should be no need to request that the work be done because it should already have been done. That said, if local government reform goes ahead, he suspects the new unitary authority will introduce paid parking everywhere and so he wondered whether it was worth spending a huge amount of money to progress a scheme when a new unitary council would do so and likely in a much more comprehensive and invasive way than had been proposed. He added that he did not feel strongly either way about the report because he considered the situation to be a shocking let down and clearly not the fault of Fenland District Council and wanted those points on the record. ·         Councillor Christy said he wanted to recognise the significant amount of work that had gone into civil parking enforcement and the feasibility work and recent modelling, which showed how complex the matter really was. He echoed some of Councillor Tierney’s points and noted that since 2008 the modelling had specifically focused on keeping Council car parks free, with enforcement only for overstaying. This reflected a long-standing position and how important free car parking had been for the economic growth of Fenland’s town centres. The report said there was no obvious positive business case for civil parking enforcement unless car parking charging was introduced and so he wondered if officers could continue to develop options that did not rely on introducing off-street parking charges, so that accessibility and the high streets were protected. He also asked whether the modelling could fully consider displacement risks, because introducing charges could push vehicles into surrounding residential streets and create new pressures for those communities. Councillor Christy added that he would welcome further work which brought forward a sustainable model for civil parking enforcement, but these were important considerations. ·         Councillor Tierney said that he was frustrated with comments officers sometimes made, such as there was no business case without paid parking. He felt this was absolute nonsense and there was a business case because the scheme could be paid for out of general taxation. There was always another way, and lots of things the Council could think about and do, so there was not only one option, and officers should not state that there was. ·         Councillor Mrs French said she would never accept car parking charges and had fought against paid parking since 1993 when first proposed. It had been agreed that off-street parking charges would never be introduced unless the Council was forced to do so by government. She still stood by that and still had the newspaper cuttings from 1993 when she had fought against it. ·         Councillor Boden advised there were several stages to go through in the debate and at the first stage, he would ask members whether they agreed that the Council should proceed with civil parking enforcement, considering the cost of implementation, but on the condition that there would be no introduction of off-street parking charges. ·         Councillor Count wanted to reinforce what Councillors Tierney and Mrs French had said. The idea that the scheme would be self-sustaining because of some form of on-street parking went back many years. He was concerned that, with a paper like this before them and the prospect of a unitary council imposing such a regime in future, people of other political persuasions on social media would take one word out of context from the meeting and claim that Conservatives were going to bring in car parking charges when in fact they had always voted it down. The only way parking charges would come to Fenland was if they were forced upon the district through a change of political control or through local government reform brought about by the government. Otherwise, parking charges were not coming in. They would be the death knell for the high streets, as had been seen elsewhere, and the lack of a sustainable business case was not the fault of civil parking enforcement or parking charges. Councils were given the right to tax to perform their duties, residents paid County Council tax only to be told that they would not bring the lines up to standard and had been saying so for years, until more than 86% of the lines no longer met the standard. He was in favour of moving forward with civil parking enforcement because the electorate had been promised this at the last election and it was needed to manage the high streets. However, like everybody else present, he was firmly against introducing parking charges in that way, and the Council needed to be careful that nobody outside the meeting misinterpreted the discussion for their own benefit. ·         Councillor Hoy commented that she remains unconvinced that LGR will happen therefore FDC could not necessarily base every policy decision on the assumption that it will. She did not agree with Councillor Tierney’s point about the business case, because she thought officers were trying to make the point that the scheme would not pay for itself without general taxation, and she did not think it would. However, she agreed with the wider point being made that the Council realised this and would pay for it from general taxation rather than from parking charges. Having uncontrolled parking created a lawless feel in a town because people thought that if low-level matters were not enforced then higher-level matters would not be enforced either. She asked whether it was possible to change any existing traffic regulation orders (TROs). In Wisbech, the decision to put double yellow lines on the High Street had, in her view, been a mistake. She accepted that some people had been parking illegally but when the police did ticket people stopped to the detriment of the high street shops. She would like to see that potentially reversed and replaced with a one or two-hour waiting restriction, but this would be impossible currently because there was no civil parking enforcement and people would simply ignore it, but it could be looked at if FDC moved towards civil parking enforcement. She asked whether TROs could be considered as part of the process going forward. ·         Councillor Boden responded that Councillor Tierney was correct that it was outrageous that FDC had been left in this position and held over a barrel by Cambridgeshire County Council. That CCC had allowed the signs and lines to fall into such a state of disrepair and illegality was shocking, and they had no intention of putting any money into it. Legal advice was that FDC could not force CCC to carry out their duty and so members were left with a choice between two bad alternatives. If Fenland proceeded now, there would still be a delay of almost two years before the parking chaos in some parts of Fenland could be redressed by bringing signs and lines up to date. If the Council did not act now, there would be at least four years before the necessary action was taken. He referred to Councillor Hoy’s point and stated that many people in Fenland were sick and tired of the way the current rules were being flouted by some people, and of the chaos caused in certain roads by parking that would be illegal if the signs and lines could be enforced. The Council therefore had to decide whether to pay up about £860,000 net and proceed or wait for a future unitary authority potentially to do it and if proceeding that money would be capital rather than revenue, which made a significant difference to the Council’s finances. He disagreed slightly with Councillor Tierney’s prediction that paid parking would necessarily be introduced by a future unitary authority. There would probably be an election before the new authority took power and parties would propose different alternatives. FDC therefore needed to act now so that parking could be regularised in less than two years rather than potentially more than four and pointed out that the new unitary authority would have far more important and difficult things to do than deal with parking costs and civil parking enforcement. Therefore, the cost, which should not have been Fenland’s cost, was justified in the interests of Fenland residents. Councillor Boden therefore proposed that the Council should proceed with civil parking enforcement, considering the cost of implementation, on the condition that no off-street parking charges were introduced, with a proposed application date for civil parking enforcement of 06/2027 for prospective parliamentary approval in 12/2027, and with any lining and signing work being carried out from 04/2027. He stated that the Council was too late in the lining and signing season to do the work this year, and if it was done next year as capital expenditure, it would not affect the revenue account nearly as much as if it were done in the current year. He also explained that the application could only be made once a year, had to be made by CCC rather than FDC and could only be considered by Parliament once a year, normally in the December following the June application. ·         Councillor Mr Count asked for clarification. He had heard the words off-street parking but as he understood it, the proposal did not read correctly because Fenland’s own car parks were off-street, and they did not need civil parking enforcement powers to decide not to impose charges there. He stated that it was on-street parking that members wanted ruled out if they were agreeing to this, although he accepted that would only come in under a change of regime. ·         Councillor Boden responded that he understood the point being made and that Fenland did not have the power to stop CCC from introducing on-street parking arrangements. However, he agreed to amend what he had stated so that it referred to both off-street and on-street parking, but that this had to be on the understanding that Fenland could not oblige the County Council not to introduce on-street parking at any time. ·         Councillor Mr Count said the original paper in 2008 had been to bring in off-street parking charges on Fenland car parks because if on-street charges alone were introduced, nobody would park there and people would simply use FDC’s car parks. He now understood what Councillor Boden meant. If Fenland stopped charges being introduced in its own car parks, then if the County Council later tried to bring in on-street charges, that would be unlikely to gain much revenue because people would not park there. He had forgotten that the Council was not in control of on-street parking and was grateful for the clarification. ·         Councillor Boden responded that he was happy to make the amendment. Much of the discussion was theoretical anyway because if the implementation date was 02/2028, then within two months neither authority might exist due to LGR. In relation to Councillor Hoy’s question about changing traffic regulation orders, Fenland would only have any authority for a limited period, in any event only about two months. He therefore suggested that if she wanted any TRO changed, she should apply to CCC rather than waiting for the implementation of civil parking enforcement. ·         Councillor Mrs French said Councillor Count’s point was a bit academic because if CCC had wanted to introduce on-street parking charges, it could do so immediately and had not done so. ·         Councillor Boden said members were being asked to provide an officer steer on the previous red line areas contained within the draft agency and service level agreement but this had been difficult because CCC had been very unreasonable in what it was insisting on, and financially it would have been a massive burden and completely unfair for FDC to take on many of the County Council’s responsibilities without the necessary income. However, because there would potentially only be two months, or even less, of operation of the arrangement between the two authorities before both sides of the agreement would be inherited by the new unitary authority, this made it less onerous to accept most of what CCC was requesting. ·         Councillor Count asked what the implication would be if LGR did not go ahead, referring to Councillor Boden’s point that it would only be onerous for two months. ·         Councillor Boden responded that two months was such a short period but if LGR did not go ahead, FDC would then have those responsibilities being given to it by CCC and would not get civil parking enforcement otherwise because the CCC would not change its position. It was therefore either to accept CCC’s terms or continue to have even worse lack of enforceability of the signs and lines in Fenland. He reiterated that it was a disgrace that FDC had been left in this position and that the County Council was unwilling to budge on something that was now increasingly theoretical. He stated that if the Council did not agree, there would be no civil parking enforcement and no improvement to the signs and lines for at least four years, and he suspected it could be much longer given the priorities of the new unitary authority.   Proposed by Councillor Boden, seconded by Councillor Mrs French and AGREED to: ·         Proceed with CPE, taking into account the cost of implementation on the condition that no off-street or on-street car parking charges are introduced, with a proposed application date of June 2027 for parliamentary approval in December 2027, and with lining and signing work being carried out from April 2027. ·         Provide officers with delegation to allow them to further negotiate with Cambridgeshire County Council and reach an agreement with them about the Service level agreement (SLA) which CCC insist on entering into. ·         Ask officers to proceed with obtaining the necessary SLA but to do so without incurring unreasonable burden on FDC in the potential two-month period. ·         Acknowledge the updated estimated increase in the overall project implementation cost, project delivery timelines and the annual CPE running costs. ·         Note the CPCA’s conditional offer for the revised grant funding extension and financial implications to the project should the Council resolve not to progress with the implementation of CPE. ·         Note the cost estimate (received in February 2026) could rise due to international issues and the M Group estimate is only valid for 90 days therefore agree that if costs rise by more than 10% the Leader of the Council to be consulted. ·         Delegate authority to the corporate director/section 151 officer to enter into an agency and service level agreement with Cambridgeshire County Council in order to progress the CPE project to implementation. Agreement shall include but not be limited to all procurement, legal, administrative, enforcement and LGR related matters.  

Date of Decision: April 27, 2026