Bollington residents to pay for parking

Bollington Town Council is to charge households around £40 a year to retain free parking.

Bollington T.C. will pay Cheshire East Council to avoid charges being brought in at Pool Bank car park.

To cover the cost, the Council will have to increase it’s council tax precept by 52%, around £3.91 a month for a Band D home.

The town council is also planning to pay Cheshire East to keep libraries open for longer hours.

Cheshire East Council introduced parking charges in December in a number of towns where parking had been free.

Bollington Town Council proposed making payments to Cheshire East Council to keep parking free and topping-up opening hours of libraries.

Bollington is one of a number of parish councils which has agreed to pay to keep their libraries open longer.

A statement posted on the town council’s website said the result of the public consultation ‘was a clear mandate from residents for the town council to pay significant sums to CEC to avoid them (CEC) introducing charges for users of Pool Bank car park on Palmerston Street and appreciably reducing the the opening hours of Bollington Library’.

The statement added that 75 per cent of that £3.91 increase is attributable to the car park and library while 25 per cent is for a combination of some necessary improvements to the town hall and the effects of ongoing inflation on all of the council’s expenditure.

And that improvement works that had been proposed for Bollington Civic Hall during the 2025/25 financial year have been paused because of the need to find funding for the car park and library and it is hoped these will be resumed in a subsequent year.

ilovemacc reckons you’re going to see more and more of this – Cheshire town and parish councils increasing their precepts, which will increase council tax bills, to cover elements that have traditionally been covered by the council tax. As town and parish councils aren’t subject to the same financial constraints as Cheshire East, precepts will rise year on year, taking total council tax bills to an unsustainable level.