Councils Draw Up Plans to Charge Employers Up to £1,250 a Year per Parking Space

Bristol City Council published the business case for a new workplace parking levy on 7 August, confirming it could charge employers up to £1,250 a year for every staff parking space in the city centre. It is not the only council working on one. Almost a dozen local authorities across England and Wales, including Cardiff, Oxfordshire, Leeds, Birmingham and three London boroughs, are now drawing up plans for a charge that critics call a tax on going to work.

Only one UK city currently runs a workplace parking levy: Nottingham, where it has raised more than £90 million from 2012 to now. If a fraction of the councils now drafting plans follow through, that number is about to look small.

What Is a Workplace Parking Levy

A workplace parking levy is an annual charge on employers for every parking space they provide to staff. Businesses with more than a set number of spaces, typically 11, are required to pay per space or apply for an exemption. The council keeps the revenue, but by law it must spend it on local transport projects such as bus routes, cycling infrastructure or park and ride schemes.

A scheme needs sign-off from the Department for Transport before it can launch. A DfT spokesperson said ministers had “always been clear that any revenue raised by schemes like this must be used to deliver local transport policies,” but stopped short of ruling out approving more of them. That approval requirement is the one lever central government has kept for itself. Everything else, from the boundary of the charging zone to the price per space and the list of exemptions, is decided locally.

Who Is Drawing Up Plans

Labour-run Cardiff Council has already approved proposals that could see employers charged up to £750 a year per space, with officials estimating the scheme could raise around £10 million a year.

Green Party-run Bristol City Council’s business case sets out a central zone charge of up to £1,250, dropping to £625 in Avonmouth and the wider city, with an estimated £40 million a year in revenue if the scheme goes ahead. Public consultation is planned for October 2026, with a final decision expected from the council’s transport and connectivity committee in early 2027. If approved, the earliest Bristol businesses would start paying is 2028 or 2029.

Liberal Democrat-controlled Oxfordshire County Council wants a charge of up to £600 per space from 2028. Workplace parking levy plans have also emerged in Leeds, Oxford, Birmingham and the London boroughs of Hounslow, Brent and Camden, according to reporting compiled by the Daily Mail, though most are still at an early consultation stage.

In Nottingham, the only scheme already running, employers pay £592 for the 2026/27 licensing year for each space above a threshold of 10, and even businesses with 10 spaces or fewer must register with the council. The city introduced the levy in 2012 and says the revenue has helped fund the extension of its tram network and expanded park and ride capacity.

Who Actually Ends Up Paying

Councils bill the employer, not the employee. But critics argue the real cost lands on workers through smaller pay rises, reduced benefits or new parking charges passed straight through to staff.

Andrew Varga, managing director of Bristol-based safety valve manufacturer Seetru, said a levy at Nottingham-style rates would put a £1.5 million expansion of his business at risk. Seetru has 75 parking spaces at its site near Bristol’s Albion Docks, most used by shift workers. “We work shifts and our staff work anti-social hours,” he said. “There is no feasible public transport, and people who work here can’t afford to live in central Bristol. We need these parking spaces over the next five years.” He said the investment, much of which would otherwise flow to the council through business rates, is “essentially dead” if the levy goes ahead, and that he is not willing to pass the charge on to staff who already work outside normal transport hours.

Luke Bosdet, from the AA, described workplace parking levies as a “double tax” on drivers who already pay fuel duty, vehicle tax and insurance. “If even half of that is passed on to the workers, that is £5 million a year sucked out of potential consumer spending” in Cardiff alone, he said, questioning why councils would target “the most regular customers” of struggling town centres with an extra charge.

Howard Cox, founder of the FairFuelUK campaign, called the plans “an outright attack on drivers,” while Shadow Transport Secretary Richard Holden said Labour councils “have found their new stealth tax, and it lands squarely on people who go to work,” and called on the government to block the schemes using its approval powers.

Why Councils Say They Need It

Bristol’s transport and connectivity committee chair, Green councillor Ed Plowden, said the levy was “desperately needed” to change how people travel to work. “We do need businesses to share the responsibility in order to change the travel habits of their employees,” he told BBC Radio Bristol. “We know that congestion costs the health of our citizens and businesses hundreds of millions of pounds a year.” He argued the city’s “whole transport system is a little bit broken” and said the levy would fund the investment needed to fix it, adding that “nothing is yet decided” on the final charge levels or boundary.

Local authority budgets across England and Wales have come under sustained pressure, and council leaders have increasingly looked at parking-related charges as one of the few revenue-raising powers they control without central government sign-off for the charge itself. The scheme as a whole still needs DfT approval before it can launch, giving ministers a veto they have so far declined to use on any of the proposals now in progress.

How to Respond Before It Is Decided

Every scheme currently on the table is still open to challenge, and the consultation windows are where that challenge counts.

• Check if your employer, or your own business, falls in scope. Thresholds vary by council, but most proposals target employers with 11 or more staff parking spaces. Nottingham’s scheme also requires businesses with 10 or fewer spaces to register, even if no charge is due.
• Watch for Bristol’s public consultation in October 2026. Responses will be taken into account before the final business case goes to committee in early 2027. Bristol City Council’s website carries the current timeline and the outline business case documents.
• Contact your local chamber of commerce or business improvement district. In Cardiff, Bristol and Oxfordshire, local business groups have been submitting formal objections and alternative proposals, including phased introduction and higher exemption thresholds for shift-pattern employers.
• Write to your local councillor and MP. Because central government must approve each scheme, MPs have a direct route to raise employer concerns with the Department for Transport before a decision is finalised.
• If you are an employee, ask your employer directly how a levy would be handled. Whether the cost is absorbed, passed on through a parking charge, or factored into future pay decisions is up to each individual business, not the council.

None of the schemes outside Nottingham are guaranteed to happen. Bristol’s own council stresses that “no decision has been made” on costs, boundaries or whether the levy proceeds at all. But with nearly a dozen authorities now working through the same process, and government yet to use its veto on any of them, employers who wait until a final decision is published will have missed the point where their objection could still change it.

Motoring Chronicle has previously reported on how councils are turning to other charges on drivers to plug budget gaps, including record parking surpluses of almost £1.1 billion last year.

Sources:

• Local Transport Today: Bristol’s workplace parking levy business case published
• BBC News: New parking charges will kill our £1.5m expansion
• AOL/Express: Fury as drivers face £1,250-a-year double taxation blow in war on motorists
• Nottingham City Council: Cost of a WPL licence