Sonia Kumar

I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of parking in town centres. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I rise to voice concerns about increased parking fees. Local authorities across the country are trying to claw their way out of financial difficulties by increasing parking fees and in my constituency, Dudley council has implemented such changes, which have been subject to much debate. Our high streets and leisure centres are the heart of our communities. They provide social and economic value for residents in Dudley and across the UK, but in recent years we have seen too many once-thriving high streets fail. Successive Governments have attempted to reverse the trend by introducing grant funding for high street improvements, business improvement districts, empty shop strategies and business rate relief—the list goes on—but many of those measures were required only because of mistakes in development policy over the past 14 years. Council budgets have been eroded, forcing councils to make impossible decisions, and the previous Government’s levelling-up funding seems contradictory in hindsight. Ultimately, it is local people who are suffering. Luckily, many councils have learned from those mistakes and proactively avoided developments that undermine the viability of high streets, but the rise of internet shopping has continued to drive shoppers from our historic towns, and long-standing traders in Dudley have suffered.