‘CAR PARK FEES DO NOT PUT OFF THE SHOPPERS’

Campaigners lose fight for free parking

FREE town centre parking would cost taxpayers £100,000 a year, council chiefs say.

More than 500 people signed a petition calling on Stoke-on-trent City Council to provide two hours’ free parking in Longton on market days.

The petitioners claimed that Longton was becoming ‘increasingly desolate’ due to shoppers using the free Tesco car park and ‘not venturing further into the town’.

But Daniel Jellyman, cabinet member for regeneration and transport, insisted that the main Longton Exchange car park was already well used, catering for around 118,000 motorists a year.

He told the city renewal overview and scrutiny committee that there was no evidence to suggest parking fees were putting people off coming to Longton.

It currently costs £1.60 to park for two hours on the 213-space Longton Exchange.

Mr Jellyman said: “At Longton Exchange it works out as 290 people a day paying for two hours. The concern was that people are being put off by the parking charge, but the facts and figures tell a completely different story.

“People do walk from Tesco into the town centre – it’s not exactly a desert. It’s the same in Tunstall with a car park at Asda. There is more of an issue in Burslem and Fenton, where there isn’t a big car park provided by a multinational supermarket.

“Providing two hours of free parking in Longton would cost the council £100,000. The majority of tickets purchased are for two hours.”

Mr Jellyman added that the council already offered a £1 flat rate on all its town centre car parks after 3pm.

The petition, which called for free parking for two hours on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, was referred to the scrutiny committee for further consideration after being presented at September’s full council meeting.

But committee members agreed that such a measure would be problematic.

Councillor Paul Shotton said: “If you remove the income from a car park you have to replace that with something else. And if we did this in Longton, it would have to be citywide. We’d have to do it in Stoke, in Tunstall and so on.

“There’s a concern that people go to the retail park and just stop there. My understanding is that orginally there was going to be a time limit on that car park, but it’s never been implemented, so people can park there all day.”

Councillor Dave Evans suggested that parking charges was not the real issue in Longton.

He said: “If the car park is already full on Saturdays, making it free is not going to make more people go to Longton. But maybe there’s a need for more parking, rather than reducing the price.”