Last night at the Business and Town Centres Committee (Wednesday 16 July), members agreed to start the process to bring in a three month trial period of night-time car park charges.

The trial period would see the introduction of a flat rate charge of £2 for night-time parking between 7pm and 6am for Council owned car parks in Brentwood and Shenfield (excluding the multi-storey).

Throughout this trial period, the Council will monitor any impact that may be created with on street parking and comments from residents and businesses will be fed back to the Business and Town Centre Committee on a regular basis. A full report on the outcome of the trial will be brought to the committee in February 2015.

It is anticipated that night-time parking charges could start in October, however before the trial can start – the process of changing the Council’s off street parking places consolidation order 2012 to reflect the introduction of the flat rate charge needs to happen.

Brentwood Borough Council’s Chair of the Business and Town Centres Committee, Councillor David Kendall said: “This is the first step in trying to achieve a fair balance between day and night when it comes to parking in Council car parks. At the moment, shoppers and those that work in the Town pay during the daytime and our night-time visitors park for free. Our aim is to reduce the cost of day time parking charges and this pilot scheme will help us work towards that”.