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

A Green Party-run council is moving ahead with plans to charge dog walkers for using parks in Bristol despite major backlash. The local authority said it would impose annual levies of £450 on those seeking to use the city's green spaces for activities including exercise classes and professional dogwalking in September. The announcement attracted immediate and vociferous criticism, with other councillors warning that the "inappropriate" charges could harm small businesses.

The scheme was paused as a result, and officials said this week that licence fees would still be implemented next year, but likely at a lesser cost than previously planned. "The activities we're trying to regulate, licence and charge a fee to cover that, are commercial activities by businesses," Stephen Williams, Liberal Democrat chair of the public health and communities policy committee, told a meeting on November 4. "They're not activities by members of the public in general."

"Obviously there will be an effect on the customers of those businesses," he added, as per the Local Democracy Reporting Service. "But they are specifically about the activities of commercial operators in our parks.

"The truth is we didn't really know the full extent of what was taking place in our parks. Now we have a better picture and I'm sure we'll have a much better scheme matching that."

Bristol City Council's Labour leader Tom Renhard, previously decried the scheme as a "desperate cash grab".

"This barking mad policy will raise a paltry sum but could have a devastating effect on people's livelihoods," he added. "This policy needs to be scrapped."

However, Mr Stephens maintained that businesses operating in Bristol's parks don't generally seek permission from the council and raised questions over whether they were covered for insurance purposes, something that could be especially relevant for exercise classes.

"We opened applications for a licence a few months ago, received some harsh feedback from operators and political colleagues, and paused it," he said. "But we're still analysing the information that came in, which has been incredibly useful and enabled us to design a scheme that better fits what we think are the activities taking place in our parks."

Conservative councillor Mark Weston warned that the impact of hiked costs would be felt by locals, however.

"It's the public that uses these services, that use the dog walkers and sports clubs and everything else," he said. "So it'll have an impact on them. The sums raised will be insignificant in relation to the budget - so is the pain worth it?"