Council explains why its multi-storey car park right next to Milton Keynes Central station has been closed for SIX years
The council has revealed why a multi-storey car park in the busiest spot in CMK has been closed for the past six years after it was bought with taxpayers’ money.
Milton Keynes Council bought the car park near Milton Keynes Central Station in 2019, promising to extend it to provide 700 much-needed additional parking spaces.
But since then, the Elder Gate building, which is between the station and Morrisons, has stood unused and neglected.
In the meantime, the council has been paying close to £1m a year for the car park and generating no income.
The building was expected to open in the Spring of 2020, but that date came and went. Now, five years on, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request demanding to know why nothing has been done with the “massive white elephant” has finally revealed the council’s plans for it.
"Ask any commuter and they will tell you it has been impossible to get a parking space in the blue bays near the station after 8am...Why wasn’t it viable to open the car park sooner?” states the woman who lodged the FOI.
This week the council has revealed the car park will re-open very soon – hopefully within the next few weeks.
An MKCC spokesperson said: "The council started to build the new car park because at the time there was a high demand for spaces around the station area of the city in excess of the spaces available, which would have become even more of a problem due to the loss of 300 spaces to build the new Santander HQ.
"Unfortunately, what no one could predict is that around the exact same time the new car park opened we entered the Covid 19 pandemic. After the direct impact of that, there was the longer-term impact of the huge change to the way people worked, with more remote working resulting in fewer daily workers in CMK and lower levels of commuting. As a result, the level of demand for parking in that area fell sharply.”
The spokesperson said no physical work needs to be carried out on the car park.
"Some minor safety checks on issues such as testing the lifts is being carried out due to the time it has been closed, but the council is hopefully these will be completed soon and the car park will be open again in the next few weeks.”
They added: "Over the past few years due to city centre growth, businesses returning to more office-based work models and a higher level of commuters, our parking data now indicates demand is back to a level where reopening the car park will be financially viable while balanced against operational costs.”
The price of parking in the new facility will be £10 a day, which some people have already slammed as too expensive.
"If you compare that to other local stations - Bedford, Leighton Buzzard, etc, it’s a bit steep. In particular it doesn’t offer reduced rates for off-peak (after 10am), evenings or weekends,” said one.
But the council spokesperson said: "The pricing of the car park is competitive against the private sector providers in the area, giving people a choice of where they want to park.”