The County Council has confirmed that the car park charges introduced last year at the Norbury Park car parks have resulted in substantially fewer vehicles being parked in the car parks than anticipated.

In response to Liberal Democrat questioning, the Cabinet Member responsible for the car parks stated that the business plan assumes that 35,075 cars would park in for the Fetcham Roundabout Car Park but that only 5,057 vehicles had parked in the car park in the period October to December 2018.

He then sought to justify this shortfall in anticipated usage as being “caused by regular users choosing to park elsewhere around Norbury Park and displacement of people who were parking all day in Fetcham Roundabout Car Park.”

The Cabinet Member also admitted that the numbers using the Crabtree Lane car park were not being monitored as no counter had been installed at the car park to record how many visitors are using this car park.

This response clearly shows that the business case and justification for introducing car parking charges at Norbury Park, which was to raise more income to fund countryside maintenance at Norbury Park, was fatally flawed as the expected numbers of vehicles using the car parks is not being achieved.

The reality is that there will not only be little funding available to spend on countryside maintenance but that the money spent on the infrastructure required to levy the charges will not be recovered whilst additional problems have been created with vehicles being parking in nearby streets.

It is clear that this decision was not properly thought through prior to the decision being taken and it is time for the County Council to admit failure and to withdraw the car park charges at Norbury Park.