Leeds plans to authorise 3,000 city centre commuter parking spaces

Leeds City Council is planning to officially recognise 3,000 commuter car parking spaces that have sprung up on  vacant land in and around the city centre without planning permission.

The collapse of the development market has left many development sites vacant, prompting landowners to rent the land to car park operators.

The council has granted planning permission for some of the sites to be operated as short-stay car parks. But officers say many sites are actually being used for  unauthorised long-stay commuter parking. In all, they estimate that there are 6,070 unauthorised  commuter parking spaces on land in and around the city centre, largely to the south of the city’s railway station.

Director of city development Martin Farrington told councillors last week that about 4,800 (80%) of the commuter spaces are occupied on weekdays. He warned that there were a further 45 hectares of cleared sites with the potential for use as commuter parking.

The city council took enforcement action last year against sites with 1,080 commuter parking spaces and the planning inspector agreed that they should only be used as short stay.

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LTT is holding a one-day seminar for owners and operators of off-street parking about maximising the economic benefits of your parking facilities.  Find out more.

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But Farrington said the council had subsequently received representations “warning that widespread enforcement against the unauthorised car parking spaces could be damaging to Leeds’ city centre economy”.

Although the council’s policy is to encourage public transport for commuting trips, Farrington said progress on improving the public transport offering had been much slower than anticipated since the Unitary Development Plan, which sets out parking policies, was published in 2001.

The Supertram project has been cancelled and its replacement trolleybus (NGT) project is still proceeding through the DfT’s appraisal process. Associated park-and-ride sites are also still in the planning phase.

“Major interventions of this nature are unlikely to be delivered in the short-term,” said Farrington. “It is therefore considered that now would be the wrong time to clamp down on unauthorised commuter car parks without an appropriate mitigation strategy being in place.”

Leeds is consulting on plans to grant planning permission to 3,000 commuter parking spaces for a period of five years on the condition that physical improvements are made to the appearance and layout of the sites, including space markings, landscaping, security lighting and signage.

Farrington said the 3,000 figure represented the current occupancy of the unauthorised sites (4,800) minus the empty long-stay parking spaces within authorised public car parks and on-street within the city centre.

When the permissions expire in five years’ time, Farrington said the council would consider “whether the delivery of public transport improvements would justify the cessation of the car parking or the granting of further temporary extensions of permission”.

Leeds plans to issue planning permissions on a first-come-first-served basis. Some of the sites that have already been subject to enforcement action will be able to apply.

Each application will have to be accompanied by a transport assessment.

The council is still considering what will happen to existing long-stay parking spaces that are not granted planning permission. “As long as they had planning permission for short stay we wouldn’t take action to close the car parks entirely,” the council told LTT.

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LTT is holding a one-day seminar for owners and operators of off-street parking about maximising the economic benefits of your parking facilities.  Find out more.