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Over 6,000 businesses from across the UK have already signed up to
the petition which was highlighted by the
Chief Executive of Peterborough Chamber of Commerce in the March
edition of the organisation’s monthly magazine.
John Bridge OBE, Chief Executive of
Peterborough Chamber of Commerce, said: “Our national counterpart
the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) recently launched this
national petition on its website, demanding that the Secretary of
State rejects the Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) which Nottingham City
Council has applied to introduce. We believe this levy, which could
see businesses pay up to £350 per car parking space to the local
authority, could set an untimely precedent when businesses across
the UK are already facing growing economic pressures. This
additional stealth tax will do nothing to assist the recovery
period.”
The WPL will require all businesses
to register workplace parking spaces, which according to the Chamber
of Commerce will prove burdensome to SMEs who are already feeling
the pressure of red tape and regulations. However businesses with
ten spaces or more will also suffer a financial set-back because
each parking space will have to be paid for. The proposed levy would
start at £185 in 2010, but will rise to £350 by 2014 based on the
Nottingham blueprint.
The British Chambers of Commerce
(BCC) has calculated that if every eligible council covered by the
consultation adopted the WPL then businesses would be left with huge
costs amounting to £3.4 billion.
Today the BCC has written to the
Transport Secretary on behalf of Chamber members across the UK
outlining the organisation’s serious objections to the scheme. In
the letter, David Frost, Director General of the BCC, disputes the
congestion-busting aims of the WPL and refers to the significant
public support for the BCC’s online petition against the WPL,
calling on Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon to scrap the scheme
altogether.
March 2009 -
Peterborough UK Community Website
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