Conservative claims on parking clock price hikes don't add up

The Conservative-run New Forest District Council's plan to hike the price of long stay parking clocks by £80 and quarterly short-stay clocks by £25 has been slammed as out-of-touch by the Liberal Democrat opposition. 

The move has also been branded a consequence of a short-term decision by the Conservatives last year to freeze prices ahead of their disastrous local election campaign. 

The Conservative Council, upon realising the fury of local residents, has gone on the defensive. First, they claimed that the parking clocks represent fantastic value for money, despite the price hike, at £1 a day. Then, after it was pointed out that people won't be paying £1 a day because in the real world people pay the whole thing at once in a lump sum (or quarterly) they changed tack.

The second claim then came that the price hike was purely to pay for an increase in maintenance costs. You can listen to this claim in the video above. Sadly, the claim is utter nonsense.

The cost of maintaining the council's car parks amounts to £400,000 a year. The income the council is going to generate through these increases to parking clocks and parking charges in general is £1.2 million. Therefore, it is dishonest for Conservative councillors to claim they are merely paying for the maintenance of car parks.

The truth is that the Conservatives are using parking charges as a cash cow.