The proposal to charge for parking in the New Forest will raise money – but it also raises a lot of other issues
Image: Forestry England
National Parks were set up as part of post-war reconstruction. There was a national consensus on the role of the community sharing through taxation in the cost of the provision of services and facilities for health, education, conservation and recreation.
But over the decades since, governments, where they have not privatised community assets – or as one former prime minister famously said, have been ‘selling off the family silver’, have set up quangos to manage and run the services.
These quangos, including the National Park Authorities and Forestry England, are given grants by government but are also enabled to find ways of raising funds for themselves.
Taxation is too readily characterised as a burden rather than a civic contribution, a ‘raid’ on your personal property. So the responsibility for raising sufficient funds for some public services, which should be through a fair and progressive tax system, is effectively passed on from government to quangos. Either way, you are paying, and actually you are probably paying twice.
There are parking charges in most national parks and Forestry England sites. The national park authorities manage the car parks in most of the national parks, and they get the money. The Crown Lands which make up a large part of the New Forest are managed by Forestry England, so the more than 130 car parks in the New Forest are managed by them. Forestry England will decide how to use the funds they would raise from introducing charges.
By not charging for parking, the New Forest has been an inspiring outlier in the blizzard of charging that has become normalised in public places. Charging in the New Forest is being justified by the thin argument that it is done almost everywhere else.
The current situation is an opportunity to raise public awareness of what has been happening, and to take a stand.
Some may recall the attempt by government to sell off the national forest estate in 2010. The public said no, and made it quite clear that they wanted to keep hold of what was theirs, and that they would not accept forests being sold off to private interests. In early 2011, the government scrapped the idea.
Yes, many car owners would be able to afford to pay for parking as just another of the expenses of running a car. But that misses the point. Access to public facilities should be free as a matter of principle.
Charges will discourage access, with its benefits for physical and mental health. For some people and families, charges would be the last straw. Charges would discriminate against those less able to pay and those who have good reason to use the car parks more frequently. There would also need to be concessions for local residents and disabled visitors.
There are also practical objections, though doubtless others will say they have been overcome elsewhere, or perhaps they are simply overlooked. Parking will be displaced to verges, to gated access points to the Forest, and to roads – creating congestion, hazards and restricting sightlines of livestock. Stopping such activities and fallout would require legislation, signage, markings, physical impediments and effective enforcement.
Car parks will require pay machines, signage, which would include penalty notices and liability disclaimers, and, if experience in some other national parks is repeated, the abilityto pay with either cash, cards or apps would vary from car park to car park. Sometimes only one method is available, and you’d better know which it is before you get there!
One argument for charging for car parking is that it might encourage drivers to find other ways to get to the Forest. 95% of all visitors to the Forest travel by car but there is no evidence that the introduction of charges is at all linked to discouraging car use, nor that any authority is really serious in trying to do so. But if it was, charges would need to be part of a much more ambitious strategy agreed and implemented with other Forest stakeholders.
There would need to be improved bus services, both scheduled and perhaps hail-and-ride, Quiet lanes – introduced effectively elsewhere but of no apparent interest to the New Forest, restricted-access roads, substantially lower speed limits in some places – down to 15mph in Jersey’s Green Lanes, the availability and promotion of free park-and-cycle options into the Forest and better strategic routes for cyclists to and in the Forest.
Sadly, the introduction of charges seems almost inevitable. The flexibility to turn into a car park for a few minutes or a few hours without measuring the payment required before having to leave will have gone.
Visitors to car parks will become customers. Forestry England will have found a new income stream but the community will have become a little poorer in more ways than one.
A sense of community, which amongst other things helps keep the Forest tidy, will be eroded. And another part of the distinctiveness of the New Forest will have been lost.
Mike Renouf