14 February (Part 2) - Killing the Golden Geese
Car
parking charges will be going up across the board in Bexley, the excuse is that
there has been no increase since
councillor Craske made up a load of figures
back in 2011, among them that every single Resident’s Parking Permit was costing around £240 to issue.
So the trick is to hold back prices while inflation increases by not even 10%,
wait until the election is over and the gravy train put firmly back on the
track, and recover any money lost - and more - with a 50% increase.
Bexley Heritage Trust (BHT) is set to lose its £570,000 grant to operate Hall
Place and Danson House and will have to fund itself in other ways. On 28th January
BHT was advertising Hall Place as a fabulous wedding venue. Ironically it was
retweeted by Bexley Conservatives apparently unaware of the damage they are
inflicting on the borough
Presumably the BHT had not heard about the
Cabinet meeting two days later in which
the plan to hit BHT again was announced. (See table below.)
The free parking at Hall Place is to end and its 100,000 visitors a year
(including tea room - council figures) will be asked to subsidise Bexley
council’s past profligacy.
The columns of figures shown below are units of £1,000 for the next four years.
Meanwhile residents are waking up to what was reported here on 21st January (30
more roads to get yellow lines). This has caused
an outcry in the News Shopper which reports that businesses in Haddon Drive
are likely to close and jobs to be lost because of council greed.
And as expected the
50% hike to the price of car park season tickets
has not gone down too well either.