Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment has he made of the effect of high car parking charges on the viability of town centre economies; and if he will make a statement.

The department does not centrally collect data on high parking charges. Local authorities are responsible for setting local parking charges taking account of local circumstances.

We want local authorities to adopt policies that support local town centres, and have recently consulted on "Strengthening Local Government Transparency". The consultation included a proposal to increase the amount of information local authorities would need to publish on parking thereby helping local communities to better understand what revenues were being raised from parking.

The intention of this proposed change would be to encourage a better local dialogue between communities and the local authorities that represent them about what appropriate parking charge levels should be.

We are currently analysing responses to the consultation and will publish our response in due course.