Fury as council to charge dog walkers £450 a year to use public park | UK | News

The Green Party-run council is pushing ahead with its plan to charge dog walkers who use parks in Bristol, despite huge backlash. The local authority said in September it would impose a £450 annual tax on people who want to use the city’s green spaces for activities such as exercise classes and professional dog walking. The announcement was met with immediate and fierce criticism, with other councilors warning the “inappropriate” accusations could harm small businesses.

As a result, the plan has been paused and officials said this week that license fees will also be introduced next year, but probably at a lower cost than previously planned. “The activities that we are trying to regulate, license and charge fees to cover that are the commercial activities of businesses,” Stephen Williams, the Liberal Democrat chairman of the public health and communities policy committee, told a meeting on November 4. “These are not activities of the public at large.”

“Obviously there will be an impact on the customers of these businesses,” he added, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service. “But these relate specifically to the activities of commercial operators in our parks.

“The truth is we didn’t know the full extent of what was going on in our parks. Now we have a better picture and I’m sure we’ll have a much better plan to go with it.”

Bristol City Council’s Labor leader Tom Renhard previously described the plan as a “desperate cash grab”.

“This barking mad policy will raise a paltry sum but could have a devastating impact on people’s livelihoods,” he added. “This policy needs to be eliminated.”

But Mr Stephens argued businesses operating in Bristol parks often did not have permission from the council and raised questions about whether they were covered by insurance; This is an issue that may be especially true for exercise classes.

“We opened applications for licenses a few months ago, received strong reactions from operators and political colleagues and put this on pause,” he said. “But we are still analyzing the information that has come in, which has been incredibly useful and has allowed us to design a plan that better suits what we think are the activities taking place in our parks.”

Conservative councilor Mark Weston warned that the impact of rising costs would be felt by local people.

“It’s the public who benefit from these services, the dog walkers, the sports clubs and everything else,” he said. “So this will have an impact on them. The amounts raised will be insignificant compared to the budget, so is it worth the pain?”