Purpose

The car park is provided in exercise of s7 powers of the Countryside Act 1968 (The Countryside Act) which gives the power for a County Council to provide Country Parks and picnic sites in its area and the ability to charge for the use of the car park is triggered in accordance with s43, on the basis that the car park is a facility or service provided under the Act. 

The £1 parking charge has been in operation since 2010, however, due to the vandalism, a decision was made in 2020 to remove the cash facility, leaving two options for paid parking consisting of card payment at the machine, or payment by mobile phone, which has resulted in the amount of damage to the machines being reduced.

The purpose of this proposed order is to formalise the current pay and display on Lancashire County Council's Country Parks Off-Street Car Parks, that are provided to allow safe parking for visitors to the amenities, whilst contributing to the maintenance of the facilities whilst promoting the correct use of the available spaces by enabling effective enforcement by the council's civil enforcement officers

The proposal does not change the types or machines, current restrictions or tariffs.

Formal consultation was carried out between 19 January-2024 and 16 February-2024 which included advertising in the local press and notices being displayed on site.  Divisional county councillors were consulted along with the council's usual consultees and the consultation documents posted on the council's website.

During the consultation process no response was received from Lancashire Constabulary, however, Beacon Fell is one of five Lancashire County Council run Country Parks and two of the other Country Parks received a response from Lancashire Constabulary raising concern that there was no provision in the exemptions for Emergency Services vehicles undertaking their statutory duties. 

In order to ensure consistency over the five Country Parks a modification was carried out to include an exemption for both the emergency services and local authority vehicles in pursuance of statutory powers or duties to park safely within the car parks.  The consultation for the modification was 11 March-2024 to 25 March-2024 with no objections or comments received.

Objection

During the consultation period one response was received on the grounds that the move to cashless payments for parking has rendered it economically unviable to have a cash option in country parks.  The respondent believes that the existence of new forms of technology is not a justification for removing from people their basic right to make payment in legal tender in whatever manner they wish.  The correspondent states that a public authority should not be participating in the growing tendency to move, what can be a useful facility, into a source of draconian restriction.

The main points raised in the objection along with Officer comments are outlined in Appendix C.

Decision

Peter Bell, Regulation and Enforcement Manager, took a decision to approve the order to proceed following discussion with the Cabinet Member and considering the objection.