This is a question for Fiona Beale, based on what it says in the Aviva submission about passing on the charge to staff. I will just set out some assumptions before I form my question. They are Edinburgh based so they are not wholly applicable to the locations that Aviva is in.
Five parking spaces in Bread Street in Edinburgh were advertised recently for a capital cost of £50,000, an indication that the business rates would be £3,700, which works out at £740 per space. That is a cost that one can project. Given that business rates and rental go hand in hand, I assume that the rental cost would also be £740, so that works out at £1,500, near enough—those are very round figures and it is very rough and ready but I want to explain where I am coming from.
I have also looked at office space in Edinburgh, which costs £28 per square foot. The average space for a worker is 75 square feet. That is £2,100 in rental rates, so we are up to £4,200. I have personally estimated—so this is the least robust part of a not very robust calculation—that services to provide for that office worker come to £1,000.
Just for the physical provisioning for an employee, the cost is £6,700. We then look at average earnings, at about £27,500. We are now up to £34,000 for provisioning for an employee with a car parking space. If we look at the levy charge in Nottingham, we are looking at another £400. What is that as an addition to the overall cost? The answer is that 1.2 per cent of the cost of employing someone is attributable to the workplace parking levy.
Furthermore, I make the little point that Aviva can recover the VAT that would be charged on workplace parking, because it is registered. If it passes on the cost to the employee, that is an £80 charge that the employee cannot recover, so you are creating a tax on the employee, which the company would not pay.
Why would that 1.2 per cent increase in the cost of provisioning for an employee be passed on? The figure could be 2 per cent—we can play around with my numbers; the ranges can be quite big. Why are you saying that that particular 1.2 per cent increase in your costs would be passed on to your employees when other costs, such as variations in corporation tax, business rates and rentals—there will be rental review periods for the rental premises—are not? Why are you saying that you would pass on that one small proportion of your costs of employing someone to your employee? I have not even talked about subsidised canteens, holiday pay or all sorts of other costs that there might be. It is a simple question. [Laughter.]