Why Yorkshire’s councils should offer free car parking this Christmas - Andrew Vine

Shop owners are trying their best to persuade us to do that, like those I met in Ripon a few days ago, and they deserve our support.

In that picturesque and historic city, rich in attractive independent shops, businesses have for the past month been offering the Ripon Passport, which is stamped every time you spend £10.

Five stamps gain you entry into a draw to win shopping vouchers to spend locally. In the shops I visited, passport in hand, fellow customers were all clutching one too, which was good to see.

A couple of the owners I got chatting to said their customers were enthusiastic about the passport, partly because it made them feel they were helping independent businesses.

There was a feel good factor about the passport, and that taps into people’s attitudes towards shopping at this time of year, when they are buying for those they care about rather than themselves.

The promotion concludes this week. I hope it has proved a great success and increased takings for all involved. If so, it could provide a template for other places to adopt.

Imaginative ideas like the Ripon Passport, which engaged shoppers with what they were browsing and buying more closely than the likes of Amazon could ever do, are proof of how hard our high streets are working to stay afloat in the face of online competition, which thanks to a skewed tax regime and Government inaction enjoys unfair advantages over bricks-and-mortar businesses.

Street entertainment and Christmas markets are doing their bit too, helping to make town and city centres more inviting to visit as well as go shopping in.

But only a few places in Yorkshire have so far taken the step that really might make the difference between retailers having a good Christmas or facing an uncertain new year – offering free parking to shoppers.

Full marks to Doncaster, Wakefield, Driffield, Beverley, Castleford, Pontefract and Pocklington for announcing that weekend shoppers can use council car parks for nothing in the run-up to Christmas.

Doncaster’s mayor, Ros Jones, will have drawn approving nods from retailers all over Yorkshire when she said free parking would encourage people to shop locally, boosting the city’s economy.

She is undoubtedly right, and many more councils really should follow the lead of Doncaster, Wakefield and the East Riding.

We all know that every council in Yorkshire is under tremendous financial pressures.

In light of that, every penny of revenue from parking is needed, but even so making it free for the next couple of weekends surely would not make matters substantially worse.

In the longer run, it might even improve the fortunes of high streets that have suffered a torrid few years and the loss of many jobs, with the effects of online competition magnified by the Covid lockdowns.

Doing everything possible to help retailers have a profitable Christmas represents an investment in the future by helping town and city centres hang on to their shops, instead of streets being disfigured by yet more that are empty and boarded up.

Decaying streets are a drain on council resources and diminish their income from business rates, so it would be to the benefit of the places we all live, as well as those whose livelihoods depend on customers, to get the crowds out and spending.

Councils who want residents to leave their cars at home and use public transport instead ought to suspend that viewpoint just for a weekend or two and recognise the Christmas spend is of such importance that giving drivers something for nothing is in everybody’s interests.

Neither the icy nor rain-sodden conditions that have arrived with the first couple of weeks of December in Yorkshire are conducive to shoppers standing about at bus stops or on draughty railway platforms, especially if they are laden with bags.

If we want them out and spending their money in our county’s shops, instead of staying cosy and warm at home where they can order deliveries to the door, we have to make it as easy and affordable as possible.