Managing Congestion: Evaluating The Nottingham Workplace Parking Levy

Congestion is a significant cost to society, amounting to somewhere between 1 and 2% of GDP according to an EU-wide survey. Accordingly, in 2000 the UK government enacted legislation that enabled local authorities to introduce new policy instruments to address this - a Road User Charge and/or a Workplace Parking Levy (WPL). Interestingly however, to date only one local authority, Nottingham City Council, has decided to introduce a WPL. The WPL in Nottingham is a charge placed on employers in the city with 11 or more employee parking spaces with all the revenue hypothecated for local transport improvements. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a post-implementation study of the Nottingham WPL. Specifically it seeks to understand the reasons why and the factors that allowed Nottingham to introduce a WPL. It aims to highlight the issues, the short term and anticipated long term impact, as well as the likelihood of a WPL being implemented by other authorities in the UK. It achieves this through a document review and thirty semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. It was found that although for some the cost of the levy is not sufficient enough to deter car use and/or the alternatives are not adequate, it is expected that some people will change travel behavior over the life of the scheme. Thus such schemes can have a positive impact on congestion and are able to deliver many wider benefits if integrated as part of a long term strategy.