Purpose

The car park is provided in
exercise of s7 powers of the Countryside Act 1968 (The Countryside
Act) which gives the power for a County Council to provide Country
Parks and picnic sites in its area and the ability to charge for
the use of the car park is triggered in accordance with s43, on the
basis that the car park is a facility or service provided under the
Act. 
 
The £1 parking charge
has been in operation since 2010, however, due to the vandalism, a
decision was made in 2020 to remove the cash facility, leaving two
options for paid parking consisting of card payment at the machine,
or payment by mobile phone, which has resulted in
the amount
of damage to the machines being reduced.
 
The purpose of this proposed
order is to formalise the current pay and display on Lancashire
County Council's Country Parks Off-Street Car Parks, that are
provided to allow safe parking for visitors to the amenities,
whilst contributing to the maintenance of the facilities whilst
promoting the correct use of the available spaces by enabling
effective enforcement by the council's civil enforcement
officers
 
The proposal does not change
the types or machines, current restrictions or tariffs.
 
Formal consultation was carried
out between 19 January-2024 and 16 February-2024 which included
advertising in the local press and notices being displayed on
site.  Divisional county councillors
were consulted along with the council's usual consultees and the
consultation documents posted on the council's website.
 
During the consultation process no
response was received from Lancashire Constabulary, however, Beacon
Fell is one of five Lancashire County Council run Country Parks and
two of the other Country Parks received a response from Lancashire
Constabulary raising concern that there was no provision in the
exemptions for Emergency Services vehicles undertaking their
statutory duties. 
In
order to ensure consistency over the five Country Parks a
modification was carried out to include an exemption for both the
emergency services and local authority vehicles in pursuance of
statutory powers or duties to park safely within the car
parks.  The consultation for the
modification was 11 March-2024 to 25 March-2024 with no objections
or comments received.
 
Objection
During the consultation period
one response was received on the grounds that the move to cashless
payments for parking has rendered it economically unviable to have
a cash option in country parks.  The
respondent believes that the existence of new forms of technology
is not a justification for removing from people their basic right
to make payment in legal tender in whatever manner they
wish.  The correspondent states that a
public authority should not be participating in the growing
tendency to move, what can be a useful facility, into a source of
draconian restriction.
 
The main points raised in the
objection along with Officer comments are outlined in Appendix
C.
 

Content

Peter Bell,
Regulation and Enforcement Manager, took a decision to approve the
order to proceed following discussion with the Cabinet
Member and considering the
objection.