NORTH NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PARKING STRATEGY

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Parking plays an important role in North Northamptonshire Council's efforts to manage congestion in our market towns and deliver on our commitment to making the area more sustainable, in response to our declaration of a climate emergency, and committing to being carbon neutral by 2030: https://www.northnorthants.gov.uk/news/council-commits-being-carbon-neutral-2030. The car parking, we offer residents and businesses needs to be affordable, convenient and enable a thriving local economy across our market towns. Many of our local town centres are changing, with a challenging retail market and a growing resident and evolving business population. The Council's parking assets, both on and off street, provide an essential element in the vitality of our town centres, however, our parking strategy must help promote cleaner, greener, more sustainable travel, and embrace changing vehicle technology, such as the switch to electric vehicles and provision of multimodal transport hubs. Parking and kerbside management have an important role to play within the wider transport policy and strategy objectives. The Council is responsible for 59 public car parks with a further 5 leased or managed by third parties. The income from parking, is currently only collected in Corby and Kettering town centres and in our Country Parks. This accounts for 9 public car parks in the town centres and 4 in the Country Parks, these charges contribute to delivering the Council's services. This may remain the case. Like many civil parking enforcement authorities, North Northamptonshire offers similar customer facing services such as public car parks, resident permit parking, on-street parking management and specialist restrictions for disabled users, goods loading/unloading, school keep clear zones and measures to support public transport. The scope of services offered, the charges applied and accessibility/flexibility to the resident/customer vary greatly. Reinvestment into optimising assets and the Parking Service as a whole is a key driver for the Council and its stakeholders. We want an exemplary Parking Service that uses the latest technology to deliver a customer focussed service, with a fair and transparent pricing and enforcement policy. We want to gain recognition for parking management as a valued service and significant contributor to a better, safer, more accessible and sustainable environment.