In the foreground one of Sutton Park’s car parks which could all become chargeable with pay and display machines in November if Birmingham City Council chiefs get the go-ahead
The deadline is fast approaching for the public to respond to a formal consultation into proposals to charge motorists to park in three of Birmingham ’s beauty spots.
The most wide-reaching change would take place in Sutton Park in Sutton Coldfield – the city’s biggest park, with multiple entrances and car parks.
But despite opposition raised during an informal consultation, Birmingham City Council is ploughing ahead with its plans to charge motorists to park at Sutton Park, Lickey Hills Country Park on the Birmingham Worcestershire border and at Sheldon Country Park near Birmingham Airport.
Read more: Public consultation begins into parking charges at three ‘destination’ parks
The plans include a 30-minute grace period at each of the parks – but after that charges will be in place between 9am and 6pm every day – including Christmas Day.
In Sutton Park, the charges for most vehicles will be £1 from 30 minutes to an hour, £2 for one to two hours, £3 for two to three hours, £4 for three to four hours and £5 for four to nine hours.
The charges will not include the Browns and Miller and Carter restaurant car parks, the Paddock car park near Town Gate and Midland Lodge which was put up for sale earlier this year.
Lickey Hills Country Park is a popular destination on the Birmingham Worcestershire border (Image: Jacob King/PA Wire)
At Lickey Hills the proposed charges are £1 an hour for up to four hours, £5 for all day and £28 for coach parking at Beacon Hill only, again from 9am to 6pm daily.
While at Sheldon Country Park the first 30 minutes is free, then the proposal is to charge 75p for 30 minute to an hour, £1.50 for one to two hours, £2.25 for two to three hours and £3.50 for upwards of three hours for the rest of the day.
The council is currently consulting on the proposals for the three parks – with the deadline for people to reply being Friday, August 29.
There are separate consultations for each park with Sutton Park’s here, Lickey Hills’ here and Sheldon Country Park’s here.
Read more: Business owner slams beauty spot car park charges plan as hundreds oppose it
But Sutton Coldfield Conservative councillors, who have consistently opposed the Sutton Park plans have now submitted 40 questions (in reality in excess of 50 with many sub-questions) to the city council which they say residents want answering.
They includes questions about pay and display machines, parking restrictions in and outside the park (traffic regulation orders), questions on the costs and revenue generated and a call for the park to be put into a trust – a long request of Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council resisted by the city council.
Councillors David Pears (Sutton Trinity), Maureen Cornish (Sutton Four Oaks) and Richard Parkin (Reddicap) have submitted the questions demanding answers and also urging the public to respond to the Sutton Park consultation before next week’s deadline.
Sutton Coldfield Conservative councillors and campaigners have joined forces in opposition to Birmingham City Council’s plans to charge motorists to park in Sutton Park 40 questions over Sutton Park car parking charges questions residents want answered
Pay and Display machines:
1. There are plans to install 31 P&D machines? Where will they be located? And once visitors have parked somewhere in the Park how far could they potentially have to walk to access a P& D machine given that there will only beone machine for every 68 acres of the park?
2. You have previously stated that ‘’the 31 coin-only Pay and Display Machines may need to be retrofitted with cashless payment options post-implementation’’ (BCC Cabinet Report May 2025).
The revised plans now suggest that cashless payment and payment via app will be available at all machines from day one of installation. Is this correct?
Read more: New plans for park parking charges are ‘outrageous’ or ‘substantial improvement’
3. What measures are being considered to prevent vandalism or coin removal from the machines in remote parts of the Park at night? And on what basis have you concluded that the risk of vandalism is ‘low’? (BCC Cabinet Report May 2025)
4. Machine usage and reliability: How will contactless payments and spp usage work in areas of the park where there is no WiFi/mobile phone coverage? What model Flowbird machines are being proposed? How reliable are solar powered machines and will they have mains power back up?
An entrance to Sutton Park, Birmingham(Image: Nick Wilkinson/Birmingham Live)
5. Will visitors with disabilities who don’t have Blue Badges be granted free parking in the park? It is estimated that Blue Badge holders only account for about 15 per cent of people with this protected characteristic.
Are you aware that your policy potentially ignores many more people with long-term physical or mental health conditions who currently enjoy free access to the park?
6. Will all resident volunteers giving up their own free time to help out in the park (eg Sutton Sea Scouts, Parkrun, Sutton Coldfield Litter Action Group etc) and all those that help out or participate in ad hoc charity and fundraising events in the park be allowed free parking?
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Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) ie yellow lines, parking restrictions etc:
7. The budget for fees for Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) in your proposals is only £75,000 (BCC Cabinet Report May 2025). What will this budget be used for and is this applicable solely for the TRO measures within the Park?
8. How many ‘frontagers’ have received formal consultation letters from you? Some residents living within 50m of the 20 pedestrian gates into the park have still not received letters from the council.
9. Where are the existing parking ‘hot spots’ you have identified as the primary focus areas for the first phase of parking restrictions pre-implementation?
10. Have you considered the impact of displaced parking at Wyndley Leisure Centre and how it will adversely affect volunteers and users of facilities at this location?
11. What is the budget for TROs on roads outside the park? Please split the budget figure between pre-implementation (already identified as parking ‘hot spots’) and post-implementation.
12. Are you aware that Highways officers estimated that the cost for TROs outside the park would be at least £500k when previous parking charge proposals have been brought forward?
13. Why did you not investigate TRO requirements for roads outside the park or allow a budget for these measures within your estimated £641,159 capital costs and before announcing your plans?
14. In your previous proposals for car parking charges (September 2022) you estimated that capital costs for the scheme would be £1,126,203. This time round your capital costs estimate is £641,159. The key difference is that three years ago you budgeted around £565,000 in your costs for ‘landscaping, car park and carriageway works’, but you have not allowed for any such costs in your latest proposals. Why?
15. Are you liaising with Walsall Council whose residents could also be impacted by displaced parking (off Streetly Lane) and what stage are your discussions at?
Parking:
16. In your consultation pack you state: ‘’the use of double yellow lines will be minimised, and signage will be installed on wooden posts where possible’’. Where will yellow lines be painted and where will signage be installed other than at the entry points to the park?
17. You have identified 25 ‘car parks’ in the park. Where are they all located? And how will visitors be made aware they need to pay for parking (and where to pay) if they don’t use one of these ‘car parks’ but park instead on the dozens of different roads, lay-bys and grass verges dotted around the 2,100 acre park?
18. You have stated that you will ‘’improve accessibility through formal disabled parking spaces and improve existing pothole issues where possible’’. What budget have you set aside for repairing potholes, where will these repairs be made and when will these works take place? Are you also aware that parks officers have recently estimated that the cost of repairing the potholes in the park today could be as high as £750,000?
19. When, where and how many formal disabled parking bays be installed pre- implementation? And will car parking areas be tarmacked to enable disabled parking bays to be marked up?
20. What extra resources are being allocated to additional parking enforcement in Sutton Coldfield to ensure that the allocation of NSL officers in and around the park won’t reduce the numbers of NSL officers currently carrying out essential parking enforcement activities elsewhere in the town eg the town centre, outside schools etc?
Financials and revenues:
21. If you are listening to residents why are you still proceeding with the formal consultation given that only two people from 4,018 respondents supported the proposed introduction of car parking charges during December’s informal consultation, and that almost 70 per cent of respondents felt access to the park should be free?
22. Several previous attempts to introduce car parking charges have been withdrawn as the project was deemed not financially viable. Why are these latest proposals any different?
23. You expect to generate surplus revenues from 2028/29 onwards once the capital investment has been repaid. Can you guarantee that all surplus revenues generated in Sutton Park be wholly re-invested in Sutton Park, and not diverted elsewhere?
24. You have suggested that you will achieve net revenue of around £248k in each of the first two full years of the project’s implementation whilst your £700,000 borrowing costs are being repaid (BCC Cabinet Report May 2025). Why has this financial return in the first two years not been considered as ‘surplus revenues’? Where will this money go?
25. You have stated that from 2028/29 onwards surplus revenues will be used to ‘’fund investment opportunities to improve the park, provide reinvestment funds for the infrastructure and make improvements to the park and overall visitor experience (eg pothole and fence repairs)’’. Can you explain in more detail what these investment opportunities are?
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26. What are your priorities for improvements and repairs, and how much funding do you consider is needed at this moment in time to resolve all of these longstanding problems to address years of under-investment?
27. Since parking charges were introduced in Cannon Hill Park in 2017 you have increased charges by 88 per cent, including a rise of 25 per cent in the past two years alone. Can you commit to retaining the initial proposed car parking charge costs for Sutton Park and if so for how long?
28. The parking charges for Sheldon Country Park are being set lower than Sutton Park due to the ‘’demographics of the local area’’. On what basis have you arrived at this opinion and are you aware that many visitors charged to park will be coming from outside the immediate local area, often from more deprived parts of the town and city?
Sheldon Country Park(Image: Birmingham Mail/Iain Findlay)
29. You have stated in your consultation pack that ‘’the expenditure required to maintain Sutton Park alone each year is approximately £990k, but it should be noted this expenditure offers no scope for improvements within the park’’. Can you provide a detailed breakdown of this annual expenditure required to maintain the park?
30. What is the annual expenditure in the park over each of the past three full financial years and projections for this current financial year, and can this be broken down into different criteria?
31. What is the current annual income (including rental income) generated in Sutton Park over each of the past three full financial years and projections for this current financial year, and can this be broken down into more detail?
Data
32. Your data for the expected numbers of cars and revenue has come from conversations with the Park Rangers, District Parks Manager and others, or goes back to the Sunday/Bank Holiday vehicle charging scheme which was discontinued over five years ago. Yet your Risk Register ranks the likelihood that charges will lead to a reduction in park usage and that anticipated income levels will not be achieved as ‘low’. How confident are you that your projections are accurate?
33. Why didn’t you carry out more reliable data gathering (eg installing data strips at the entrances) to monitor the volume of cars coming into the park?
34. The Cabinet Report assumes only a 10 per cent reduction in car park usage in the park. On what basis have you come to this conclusion?
Town Gate at Sutton Park – one of five main entrances to the park where motorists can currently park for free – but that could soon all change if Birmingham City Council approves parking charges plans
35. Only 10 per cent contingency has been built into the scheme’s capital costs. Why do you consider this is sufficient? What contingency percentage is usually built into other similar schemes?
36. You expect to issue 500 annual parking passes at £52 each stating that ’’once charges are implemented the uptake of annual parking permits is expected to become commonplace’’ (BCC Cabinet Report May 2025). How have you arrived at this opinion given that so many respondents in the informal consultation rejected the annual parking permit?
37. Have the parking revenue estimates allowed for the reduced park opening hours in the winter months?
38. Has any allowance been made for potential claims for accidents in potholes and footpaths not being maintained, or claims from residents living on the Four Oaks Estate forced to take measures themselves to close roads to tackle displaced parking on private roads where TROs cannot be enforced?
39. What is the timetable for further consultations and potential implementation, including TROs on pre and post implementation schemes?
Read more: ‘Shocking’ Park car parking charges plan slammed as MP says it’ll cause ‘misery’
Putting the Park into a Trust:
40. In February 2021 Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council provided you with a detailed independent report highlighting the parlous state of the park, which it found to be in a deteriorating condition with water pollution, crumbling infrastructure and general degradation.
Encouraged to do so by yourselves the Town Council then followed this up with a second independent report in January 2022 setting out a range of alternative park governance options under different Trust models.
The second report concluded: “Trust models can help generate greater investment in an open space. For those sites which were formerly managed by local authorities, the change in management model has enabled greater investment in the park.
“The trust model enhances funding options and enables other benefits like gift aid, bequests and financial support from corporate bodies. Changing local perceptions of a site being a local authority managed site to a charitable trust managed site can help to engender greater sympathy and local investment.”
The [Royal Sutton Coldfield] Town Council has held monthly meetings with you over the past three and a half years to discuss, agree and formalise an alternative governance model of Sutton Park on a trust basis to ensure the Park attracts inward investment enabling it to have a long term sustainable future.
Why did you recently pull out of these on-going discussions, with no forewarning or notice, given that the town council provided you with two independent reports (the second of which you encouraged) and after several years of discussions during which time the condition of the Park has fallen into further disrepair and neglect?
Cllr Majid Mahmood, city council cabinet member for environment and transport, has previously said: “We have some wonderful parks and green spaces across the city.
“But we need to be able to maintain them for the benefit of everyone. Introducing parking charges at these three major sites will help protect and maintain all our green spaces.
“Whether you use these parks for walking, cycling, exercising or meeting up with people, we want to hear your views on rate of charging and when we you should be charged.
“We are also aware of potential impact of displacement parking and will therefore be looking at traffic restrictions in existing hotspot areas and any need for further restrictions following residents’ feedback.”
Cllr David Pears said: “The questions include things like how are they going to police the 30 minutes free parking? There are no ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) cameras.
“A number of businesses have got big concerns about it all. The Miller and Carter are talking about having ANPR at their car park.
“At Brown’s (the former Park House Toby Carvery) people will park there for free and that could affect its customers. At the Bracebridge they are wanting to use pay and display by that restaurant.
“They are going to use solar-powered machines they use in Cannon Hill Park. NSL does the traffic enforcement around the rest of the city – but will they recruit more people?
“The money from fines will pay NSL and the surplus will go to the city council’s highways budget. We haven’t had a reply to any of the questions yet.”
Cllr Parkin added: ““Residents are asking these questions. There are now just seven days left to have your say before the city council’s formal consultation period closes.
“I understand the Council has already received almost 4,000 responses but we need to keep the momentum going.
“Residents can also attend the council’s consultation Teams meeting with city council officers next week on Tuesday, August 26 from 6pm to 8pm. To request a Teams invite please email: suttonparkconsultation@birmingham.gov.uk
“Sadly the city council didn’t feel it suitable or necessary to attend a public meeting to explain their plans and answer questions in person.”