Parking charge review adds insult to injury

WE’VE waited years for Wiltshire Council to review its parking charges – and for what?
The £9 all-day rate, with no compensating increase in park-and-ride opening hours, may be the headline-grabber.
But don’t be too distracted by that. The real devil is in the detail of this public consultation. Shoppers, tourists and business visitors park for much shorter periods.
And instead of heeding traders’ calls for significantly cheaper one, two and three-hour stays, the council is offering a measly 10p or 20p off in the central car park. Even then the Maltings isn’t included.
Short stays at Salt Lane, College Street and Brown Street will cost the same as now.
Lush House car park – where the income goes to the city council – will become more expensive, in order to “to manage demand”.
The only real reduction will be at the perennially unpopular Culver Street stack, scene of the recent ‘Free After Three’ initiative. I’ve seen no indication whether that has proved successful, or whether it will continue.
Until now, rather than pay Wiltshire a penny more than strictly necessary, some members of the Awkward Squad, like me, have taken advantage of on-street parking at 20p for 15 minutes.
So the council’s going to get rid of it.
It says 15-minute slots are “difficult to enforce”. Presumably when the wardens’ backs are turned, some shoppers are getting away with an extra five minutes free – and that would never do, would it?
It’s also contemplating raising the half-hour meter price to 80p. I suspect the principal beneficiary of that will be Waitrose.
Meanwhile over in Trowbridge, residents will benefit from cheaper all-day parking. I think that’s called rubbing our noses in it.
It’s interesting to see John Glen calling for the park and ride to be scrapped so we don’t have to subsidise it any more.
But I’m sure I heard somewhere, aeons ago, that it would mean the council having to repay the huge set-up costs to the government. And how could Wiltshire afford that?
Besides, it needs park and ride because it’s planning to provide fewer city centre spaces.
So here’s its nod to democracy: The new charges “should be seen as one possible solution”. You are “invited to propose alternative charges” and explain how they may be funded.
I acknowledge that a lot of time and effort on the part of council staff has gone into this consultation document.
We, the public, are not accountants, by and large. We don’t have the technical expertise to assess the cumulative effect of all the different parking charges across a large county, let alone reapportion them in a politically acceptable manner.
When we don’t come up with an alternative ‘cost neutral’ package, we’ll be told we had our chance.