by Bill Heaney
The Scottish Conservatives have pledged to abolish car parking charges for stays of up to two hours in a bid to revive the country’s ailing high streets, including Dumbarton, Alexandria, Helensburgh and Clydebank.
Under the plans in the party’s Holyrood election manifesto for the election on May 7, local authorities would be given the funding to end short-term parking fees to stimulate local economies in towns and cities.
Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay unveiled the policy this morning to coincide with the SNP’s “crippling” business tax rises coming into force.
The rates revaluation, which business leaders have pleaded with John Swinney to pause, has seen bills jump by several hundred per cent for some, adding to the woes of high street businesses.
These exacerbate the current difficulties in Dumbarton and the Vale where shop owners have voted with their feet and moved out, leaving empty premises every few yards.
The situation in Dumbarton and Alexandria has been made worse, as shoppers have been waiting for years for the council to come up with a remedy for the day-long traffic choke at the bus stops and traffic lights at the junction with Quay Street.
Findlay, left, said the anti-business policies of the Nationalists, coupled with their cuts to local government funding and soaring personal tax rates, which limited consumers’ spending power, had left Scotland’s high streets in a “sorry state”.
He added that the measures proposed by the Scottish Conservatives would boost local economies by making it cheaper for hard-pressed shoppers to visit their town centre and support small businesses.
Russell Findlay said: “After almost two decades of neglect under the anti-business SNP, high streets are in a sorry state.
“Our common-sense plan to provide councils with funding to give motorists two hours of free parking will generate much-needed footfall.
“This would create a buzz in towns and cities – and give local businesses a big shot in the arm.
“All the SNP have done is choke businesses with red tape and hammer them with high taxes.
“At the same time, they’ve slashed funding for councils and made life miserable for motorists, who are treated as pariahs.
“We’re the only party with credible plans to cut taxes and get our economy moving again.
“That’s why Scots need to vote Scottish Conservative on their peach ballot paper and stop an SNP majority.”
Meanwhile, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, right, has today used a visit to the Far From The Madding Crowd book shop in Linlithgow to set out how his party is standing in the way of the SNP’s business rates wrecking ball and to reveal a package of new measures to support high streets.
From today, new rateable values will be in place for all 260,000 rated non-domestic properties in Scotland.
Through budget negotiations, the Scottish Liberal Democrats secured £178m in additional rates relief for linchpins of the high street, including pubs and restaurants – a move UKHospitality Scotland said “will help soften the blow”. But the party has warned that the system is broken and needs to be fixed.
In the Scottish Liberal Democrat manifesto, the party will commit to:
- Reforming business rates and ensuring revaluations don’t produce unfair bills that condemn otherwise viable businesses.
- Improving public transport with more late-night rail services to boost the nighttime economy and make a night out easier and more affordable.
- Immediately double the funding for the Retail Crime Taskforce, meaning more areas will have more police officers, detectives and specialist analysts focused on offences such as shoplifting and its connections to organised crime – a move that could result in 4,000 more shoplifting charges and detections this year.
Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “Business is the beating heart of Scotland. But the SNP Government doesn’t get business, and their track record proves they don’t care about it. Too many are going bust and high streets are struggling to survive.
“Scottish Liberal Democrats stood in the way of the business rates wrecking ball and got £178m to help linchpins of the high street like pubs and restaurants. It’s a start; we absolutely need to go further, and it proves my party will roll up our sleeves and get things done.
“We will create a competitive and fair business tax regime that supports growth and employment. We won’t let sudden steep rate hikes threaten the survival of successful businesses.
“We want to make it easier and more affordable to have a night out by increasing late-night rail services. And we’d double funding for the specialist Police Scotland unit going after shoplifters and the organised crime that can sit behind it.
“If you want to get customers back to high streets that we can be proud of then in many constituencies we are on the verge of winning against the SNP, but wherever you are, every vote for the Scottish Liberal Democrats on the second peach ballot paper will deliver change with fairness at its heart.”