Car Parking : Employers Responsiblity

Graham Money
Member - 1 post

On any new bulid the local authority under the planning laws ensure employers have the correct level of parking. There is a ratio used (canot remember it just now but its something like 1 car space per 1.8 employees) but your local planning office or web can tell you.

Steve Ballantyne
Member - 3 posts

The carparking ratio may be different in different Planning authorities and relate to floor space rather than numbers but it may also not be a fixed requirement and it may be a limited and maximum (not minimum) ratio, to reduce car dependancy and encourage the use of public transport. I'm not aware of any obligations on employers to provide workplace parking - it will be a very different consideration for urban or rural settings.

The applicant will most likely have had to prepare a (green) Travel Plan as part of the planning application and that will say how the policy on parking/public transport etc. has been determined in the proposals.

Mark Shuttleworth
Member - 57 posts

I don't think you have to provide parking spaces for staff Jim, but you may have a few contractual issues if you already supply parking provision for your staff - especially if it's free. But if space is available and approval possible, i would seek it.

Your developer should very easily be able to tell you how many parking spaces your new development is allowed. The allowance can be different for each local authority but is increasingly based on the square meterage of the development. Ratios can be anything from 1 space per 35m2 - 1 per 50m2.

Steve is right, if parking spaces haven't already been approved in the development plans, you will have to support your application with a formal travel plan.

Martin Brewer - Mills & Reeve
Online advisor - 87 posts

There's no inherent obligation to provide staff with car parking places. Obviously if anyone has a current contractual right to a car parking place then you will need to continue to provide that or if, for example, that's not possible because of the geography of the site, you could replace the car parking space with say a payment to the employees of the financial equivalent so that having to park in a car park doesn't financially disadvantage the staff

Karen Beadle
Member - 4 posts

My NHS trust is about to bring in car parking charges for staff. Bearing in mind that the hospital is in the middle of nowhere and that some of us were moved there from another hospital closer to home when it was down-graded, can anyone tell me if--
a) The trust can legally charge all of us the same amount even though our salaries are quite different (consultants, who are some of the top earners, do not have to pay at all). If so...
b) Does the trust, therefore, have to be able to guarantee each person a parking space as I no longer wish to park on a grass verge when all the spaces are full by 8am.

Kevin Brown
Member - 103 posts

There seems to be an element of discrimination at work here, and it appears to be a matter of deliberate policy to appease senior staff. Depresingy, it's usually the case that those who can best afford to pay for their privileges are never required to, but instead are subsidised by those less able to afford it.
Leaving aside the issues of implied rights and customs and usage it appears to me that if some staff are given preferential treatment by being provided with free car parking whilst other have to pay then that is a benefit in kind and taxable, probably at the higher rate.
I suppose someone has to pay the salaries of all those layers of management (not forgetting the car park wardens).

Karen Beadle
Member - 4 posts

Thanks for replying Kevin. You are absolutely right about the car park wardens!

Brian Robbins
Member - 2 posts

Car parking is and will remain a contentious issue. Unless you have made a specific contactual arrangemnt you are not obliged to provide car parking to staff. However it is sensible if you can provide parking to supplement it with shuttle buses, cycle schemes and other incentives to cut down the demand for parking. Local authorites are under pressure to reduce the overall dependency on the car, reducing the allownaces fro car aprking is but one way they are doing so.

Karen Beadle
Member - 4 posts

It would be wonderfull not to have to rely on my car! But since being relocated, it would take me two and a half hours, one train, one bus and one shuttle bus to get to work. I do not relish the idea of travelling home after my late duty on public transport, getting home at 11 o'clock and then getting up at 4 o'clock the next morning for an early duty (there is no pattern to nurses shifts).

Alan Lowrey
Member - 2 posts

Kevin, the good news is that the provision of car parking at, or near to, the normal workplace is exempt from a charge to tax by reason of section 237, Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003. The exemption also applies to the reimbursement of employees' parking costs by the employer.

The sensible approach where employees have to pay for parking is to invite them to sacrifice salary to the value of their annual parking charges so that they receive the benefit of tax-exempt parking and save tax and NICs on the amount of salary forgone.

If the annual parking costs are, say, £500, a Higher Rate (40%) taxpayer will save over £200 per year in tax.