‘Queue for 15 minutes so I could shop for 10’
REINTRODUCED CAR PARK FEES LEAD TO LONG TICKET WAITS
SHOPPERS in Blaby were forced to queue for up to 15 minutes to purchase a 30p parking ticket.
Parking charges on a store’s car park were reintroduced last month after the Iceland store opened in place of the village’s former Waitrose store.
But last Saturday, large queues developed at a parking machine in the car park behind the store.
The council has since apologised, stating broken ticket machines were the reason for the queues.
Jayne Gilbert, one of those in the queue, said she spent a quarter of an hour waiting to get one 30p ticket.
She posted the picture on Facebook and wrote: “Popped into Blaby this morning. Spent 15 minutes queuing for a parking ticket and 10 minutes’ shopping.”
She urged Blaby District Council to “see sense” and introduce free shortstay parking.
Jayne said: “Otherwise you’ll be losing people’s patience and custom as they’ll be off elsewhere. Several people in this queue left it and drove away.”
The reintroduction of car parking fees has proved controversial, with other residents also claiming the charge is pushing people away from shopping in the village centre.
Blaby District Council justified bringing the small charge back in December, saying that the money taken is used for upkeep and reinvestment across the district.
People using the car park can get their 30p refunded if they spend £5 or more in Iceland.
But after several machines became out of order at the weekend, there were frustrations over the situation.
Paul Hartshorn, Liberal Democrat councilor for Blaby South, said: “I have spoken to a couple of the people who visited Blaby on Saturday and some of the businesses in Blaby over the past few weeks.
“All of the people I have spoken to are disappointed regarding the reintroduction of the car parking charges.
“The situation was made far worse on Saturday as a number of the machines were not working and some people were just leaving in disgust and not bothering to wait.
“Those who did queue up were having to wait for over 10 minutes for a ticket at the one working machine.
“While I appreciate that some form of parking charge is required, to have absolutely no free parking period at all is, I believe, seriously damaging to many of the businesses in the village.
“I have spoken to the officers at the council who have been working very hard to ensure we do not have a reoccurrence of Saturday and all the machines should be working now and going forward.”
John Richardson, from the council, apologised to those affected by the two machines that were out of order.
He said: “We would like to apologise to all those affected by the outage of two parking machines in the Enderby Road car park on Saturday and thank them for their patience in waiting to pay for parking.
“This was due to unforeseen technical issues which have now been resolved with all machines operational.”