Victoria Common consultation

Overview

Welcome to the informal public consultation for the proposed introduction of charges at Victoria Common.

BCC is one of the last local authorities in the country to introduce charging within parks on a daily basis and income generated will be reinvested into the respective park to improve infrastructure and maintaining the park to the standards visitors expect. Crucially, access to all parks remains free – the charges are not to use the parks but only to park a vehicle.

There are visitors to Victoria Common who cannot use the car park after 10am as the car park is full, yet the park is empty. The Parks service carried out a data usage survey over two days in June 2019 and found that only 9% of the vehicles parked at Victoria Common during that period were visitors to the park; the remainder of the vehicles parked were workers in local businesses, shoppers, and parents on the school run. As the car park at Victoria Common is currently free and the other car parks in Northfield charge for parking, e.g. Grosvenor and smaller car parks along the High Street, this is a likely explanation as to why park visitors struggle to find a space at Victoria Common car park.

The proposed scheme at Victoria Common will result in a number of key benefits, namely: 

• Visitors to the park will benefit from reinvestment of revenue from car park charging into the park for its ongoing upkeep and future works
• Longstanding traffic management issues can be effectively managed and resolved. e.g. carriageway works on Meeting House Lane to create a safer pedestrian route to the park
• Improve accessibility by addition of formal disabled bays in the car park
• The presence of enforcement officers can act as a visual deterrent which may deter any anti-social behaviour.
• Park users will be able to use the car park
• Ability for the Parks Service to meet savings targets for 2019/20 and onwards. 

The consultation pack below contains details of all the elements of the proposed scheme, including:

• Project scope (including car park and carriageway designs)
• Proposed pricing structure and payment methods
• Enforcement
• Investment wish list for the site
• Next steps

Please complete the BeHeard survey via the link below to register your views.