Addressing car park problems

I gave grave concerns about the proposed Parking Management Plan for Chichester and its devastating effects to the prosperity and future of the city.

If you live in or care about the future of Chichester then you need to carefully read and think about the proposed Parking Management Plan, then respond with your thoughts.

This is a plan with no strategy and can’t be compared with changes, as stated, that have occurred in Bognor Regis and other local towns, where parking restrictions have been limited to the key centre areas not the whole housing estates and

business areas.

This plan is designed to cover the whole of the Chichester area from inside the A27 up to the outskirts of Lavant, in doing so parking will be very restricted for all residents and people/ customers visiting the city as well as driving out the employees of Chichester businesses who will have nowhere to park.

What happened to park and ride and other facilities for supporting the city?

This plan as it stands is the beginning of the death of Chichester as a thriving market town.

The plan is designed to force out any Chichester business employees and visitors to the city from ever parking on the street.

This will result with the already near full car parks (at a high 78 per cent occupancy) being filled up at the start of the day by those business employees that can afford to pay for parking, resulting in employees who can’t afford the high parking fees and customers of the city’s businesses having nowhere to park.

The concerns were discussed with the council’s representative at the consultation session who agreed that this is the likely outcome and we’ll tackle it when it happens.

There seem to be no published financial information regarding how much of our money has been spent to date, what the costs of implementing and on-going maintenance of this proposal, as well as what are the likely revenue earnings and fines incomes.

This effective strategy is back-to-front, with the real problem requiring addressing being ignored and ‘just let us put our head in the sand and hope it goes away’ – it won’t go away.

The problem that needs addressing is the provision for affordable parking for the city’s employees, large organisations and the hospital.

If these were adequately and successfully addressed then there would be no need of this proposed costly and devastating plan and the successful economic and environmental future of our much loved city would be provided for. JIM BOULTON Dalloway Road Arundel