'I welcome suggestions to make West End better for visitors'

The leader of Westminster council today appealed to Standard readers for new ideas on how to ease West End congestion.

Colin Barrow said a "period of reflection" following the scrapping of the "tax on nightlife" until after the Olympics must be used for fresh thinking.

He said: "I would welcome ideas from any and every quarter to make the West End a better place to live and visit. A less congested and more pleasant place to be for everyone. I challenge those who have opposed us in this debate to tell us how they would address this issue and I welcome their ideas and those of all Standard readers."

His comments came amid new allegations about a £32million black hole in the borough's parking revenue - triggering fresh claims that the plan was really a cash-raising exercise.

Parking campaigner and professional accountant Barrie Segal, said his analysis of the council's accounts showed how it suffered huge shortfalls in revenues from 2007.

The council's finance and transformation policy report, published this month, showed that official predicted a "surplus" from fines of £10.2million in 2008-09 but in fact it came to less than £3.3million. Even worse shortfalls followed in the next two years.

Mr Segal, of Appealnow.com, said: "As a chartered accountant I see that the figures show a dramatic drop of £33 million in the budgeted parking ticket revenues for the three years to 2011. For the four years to 2012 the budgeted surplus is more than £40 million below target.

"Now Westminster is seeking to increase the times of parking enforcement at the weekends with the resultant increase in parking and parking ticket revenues."

Westminster has always denied that the now delayed evening and Sunday parking charges were driven by revenue raising. Lee Rowley, cabinet member for parking and transport, said: "By law, the council is not allowed to use parking fines purely to raise money, and we don't. The accumulated surplus as of March 31, 2011 was £32.4million - of that, £9.4million went on concessionary fares, including the freedom pass, £17.3million on highway and street maintenance and par king improvements, including Piccadilly Two Way which opened last week, £3.8million on street works and lighting, £1.2million on vital home to school transport and £600,000 on traffic management projects."