A new “April fools” charge for parking permits has been branded as a “stealth tax” in the latest of a series of complaints about recent changes to parking enforcement.
Since April, Merton Council has asked new users of a visitors’ permit pay a additional £25 “administration fee” – £165 in total – while existing users will continue pay the normal £140.
Conservative councillor Suzanne Evans said she was told by council officers that the new £25 fee came into effect on April 1 and that council officers told her they thought it was an April fools’ joke.
She said: “There has been no £25 administration fee for the last two years so why does there have to be one now? This is quite simply a stealth tax.
“With the one hand they say they are reducing the costs of permits, but with the other they are adding fees without an explanation of why.”
Last week, the Wimbledon Guardian revealed that not even doctors called out on emergency calls are immune from parking tickets while the appeal process was exposed for its inconsistency when a husband and wife were given different judgments for an identical parking ticket appeal.
And there are more changes set to come following work completed this month by a management consultant from CapGemini, who is being paid £85,000 for a 12-week contract to make the parking services department more efficient.
When asked about the new £25 charge, the council’s deputy leader, Councillor Mark Betteridge, said: “This is a one-off administration charge for new permit applications covering the initial costs of setting up new residents on our system and supporting the running costs of our online renewal scheme.
“For all existing residents we have frozen the costs of their parking permits; real financial help at this difficult time.”
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