CORNWALL Council’s Liberal Democrat member for transport Dan Rogerson has defended his decision to increase parking charges across the Duchy by six per cent in line with inflation.

Cllr Rogerson has accused Cllr Connor Donnithorne of playing politics after the leader of the Tory group introduced a motion at a meeting of the council this week calling for the decision to be reversed.

The six per cent price increase is expected to generate an additional £360,000 this financial year and also generate an additional £930,000 in the 2026/27 financial year.

Cllr Donnithorne, who was allowed to present his motion, said he was very disappointed that it was not being debated.

He told the meeting: “Cabinet gave no indication of the decision to increase parking charges by CPI of six per cent either at full council since the election, at the Cabinet meeting or at overview and scrutiny committees of which I chair one. In fact, on August 18 the Cabinet member sent out an email saying there is no requirement to consult for parking charge increases and whilst, of course, that is true, I think that a better and more transparent way would have been to put this either through Cabinet or through scrutiny.

“It seems that not even members of the administration’s parties were consulted or engaged on this matter too. I’d be very interested to see which Liberal Democrat or Independent councillor supports a hike in parking charges by six per cent because if this had gone to a vote today I’m pretty confident this council would have sent a clear and strong message that there is no need to increase parking charges.”

Cllr Donnithorne, who was one of the few Conservative councillors to keep his seat at the May election, added: “The budget that this administration inherited froze parking charges for the whole of 2025 and delivered the highest maintenance budget for our road network since 2017.

“At a time when we should support our town centres and high streets, when there is a fully funded decision to freeze parking charges in the budget, it was unnecessary to do anything other than that.”

Speaking after the meeting, Cllr Rogerson defended his decision. “Connor’s playing politics with it. Apart from election year, the Conservatives put it up by CPI each year, so it’s not an out of the blue increase, it’s what normally happens. They thought it [freezing parking tariffs] might save some Tory seats this year and, of course, it didn’t.”

Cllr Rogerson said Cllr Donnithorne put all the car parks in Cornwall into four tariff bands when he was the portfolio holder for transport. “That doesn’t really meet the needs of each community, so I’ve said to councillors we need to look at all of them and then we can tweak them and move them around according to local needs and local economies.”

He has emailed all 87 councillors asking for their opinions concerning parking tariffs in their divisions, which could lead to changes in the future.