The Stage

Charges challenged

Published Wednesday 3 February 2010 at 12:45

Few revenue-generating activities in London have grown at such a rate as Theatreland’s box office which, The Stage revealed, topped £0.5 billion during the last year.

This is by no means the capital’s most jaw-dropping statistic - a recent survey by the BBC stated that, in a similar period, London local government achieved nearly as high a return from parking charges and fines alone.

The estimated £0.45 billion was raked in by a total of 32 councils, providing an average of £14 million per authority. Of these, by far the biggest beneficiary was Westminster City Council, which made between £70-80 million.

A useful sum, one might think, but very far, it seems, from being sufficient for Westminster’s needs. It now intends to introduce more punitive limits on parking, charging motorists up to midnight and ‘harmonising’ charges.

Around one in six theatregoers do not travel by public transport. Not all are selfish and superannuated. They include the elderly, infirm, family weekenders and those whose train and bus services cannot be safely guaranteed.

Suggestions that all will migrate from private transport to other means are nonsense. Many will stay away, depriving the theatre industry of tens of millions of pounds and putting an end to the record successes of the last seven years. Theatre staff and performers travelling at unsocial hours will also be among the losers.

The council insists that, as an elected authority, it has a duty to ensure efficient traffic flow and a right to increase parking charges as it deems fit.

The law does not prevent this. Indeed, figures suggest that for every pound Westminster currently earns from council tax, it makes 50p more from parking-related revenue. However, the rules state that revenue generation cannot be the motive for increased charges, merely a consequence.

Westminster maintains that it is abiding by this requirement. Yet we know it is struggling to plug a £20 million-plus deficit and cannot expect to make up the difference from council tax because of government caps on increases.

Thanks to the recent publication of an internal Westminster report, we know too that the council has already costed the parking plan for its revenue-raising potential, put at £7 million.

The Stage unequivocally supports London theatre in its resistance to a plan that punishes a thriving industry and forces it to underwrite the bill for Westminster’s mistakes.

We challenge the council to demonstrate the legitimacy of its case by proving that revenue raising is not its prime motive.

And we urge its representatives to heed the example of the last council to attempt a similar scheme - nearby Camden, which left the High Court defeated in 1995, and may not rush to ape its neighbour.