Parking changes will drive people away
✒ JOSEPH Pitt, 1759-1842, founder and developer of Cheltenham’s Georgian Pittville Estate, now a suburb of Cheltenham Borough, is likely turning in his grave at the news that the Liberal Democrat-dominated town council is to introduce parking charges for visitors as a way around the free-to-enter precedent for the park established by the Victorians.
Conservative activists in Pittville – Joseph Pitt was Conservative MP for Cricklade, also in the Cotswolds – are up in arms at what they are describing as a stealth tax to charge visitors to the park and its architecturally-noted Pittville Pump Room, a fee for arriving at the tourist venue in their cars.
The Council is not just out of order in proposing yet more charge-to-park sites in the town – it manages 15 car parks already – the new charges will drive away older residents who rely on motorised transport, be it oil-based fuel or electric powered, as well as visitors from elsewhere in the Cotswolds drawn to the £540,000 children’s play area and animal centre.
Our Council is mis-using its 32-6 seat Liberal Democratic majority in undemocratic ways that are leading to the town becoming a no-go area for shoppers and other visitors.
The council’s leader doesn’t own a car or drive and appears totally taken in by the economics of punishing car owners for having the affront to enter our town and now our best known park and architectural feature.
Quoting very selected council data as proof of modal change – the percentage of travellers using a particular type of transportation – he persists with the year-long trial closure of the inner ring road at Boots Corner and the upshift in council-owned parking sites and charges.
He seems to forget that his job is to direct the council staff that manage 115,000 residents’ greatest asset, their town, or borough.
He and others in the council chamber point to the authority’s focus on raising money from our fixed assets while being accused at the same time of attempting to hide variable cost savings proposed for diminished waste services and fewer recycling collection points, and using unproven vehicle pollution data as a stick at the previously unmonitored Boots Corner.
What would create a better town, I suggest, would be a more balanced economic approach to the services with which we charge our elected representatives to provide, not that we elected our councillors for their economic strengths.
Oh, and let’s have more transparency and less smoke and mirrors in the public consultations and communications from the Municipal Building. Michael Evans Chairman Pittville Conservatives