Camber Sands car park charges to increase

On Monday (March 27), Rother District Council’s cabinet agreed to introduce a number of changes to how the authority runs its car parks.

These included plans to introduce flat fees at the council’s Camber Sands Central car park, with visitors to be asked to pay £30 to park for the day, discounted to £15 for those arriving after 3pm.

This flat fees would also apply at the Putting Green car park, although only for a single season as this site is set to be decommissioned to make way for a recently-approved housing development.

The council will continue to offer tariffed parking at its Camber Sands Western car park, but at a higher price than is currently charged. The new fees will start at £4 for up to an hour, rising up to £20 for more than six hours of parking.

Cllr Kevin Dixon, the council’s Liberal Democrat cabinet member for finance, said: “What we wanted to achieve is more income from Camber Sands, because it is not fair at the moment that the residents of Rother are subsidising the activities at Camber, which are generally used by people who don’t live in Rother.

“It is important that we try and get as much back into the council for the massive costs we have at Camber.”

Notably, the new flat fees are only slightly lower than East Sussex County Council’s on-street parking fines (set at £70, reduced to £35 if paid within 14 days). Officers had noted this as a concern in the report.

On this point, Cllr Dixon said the council had made the case for increased fines for illegal parking in the Camber area.

The proposals were broadly welcomed by ward councillor Paul Osborne (Con), although he also raised concerns about the possibility of the price rise increasing traffic disruption.

He said: “My only concern would be people driving in there, baulking at the cost and then attempting to turn around when there is four other cars queued up behind them trying to get in the same way.”

The increased fees were agreed alongside changes to the council’s permit parking system.

The changes include the introduction of weekly, monthly and three-month permits for unlimited use of a single off-street car park in the district. The council already offers six-month and annual permits for this service.

This will come alongside a price increase. Currently an annual single car park permit would cost around £350. This is set to increase to £500 once the changes come into effect.

Cllr Dixon argued the permits would remain good value for money despite the increase, noting that tickets would come out to £1.37 per day.

The council also is set to stop its offer of ‘all car park’ permits at the same time, but none of these had been sold within the last five years in any case.

For more information on visiting Camber Sands, visit https://www.rother.gov.uk/leisure-and-events/beaches-and-coastline/camber-sands/