Time for free parking?

I Ts it time to axe parking charges in the city centre? The High Street, and not just in Peterborough, is in crisis and maybe even in terminal decline. he perfect storm of internet shopping, out of town retail centres and economic and political uncertainty in our Brexit world, is threatening to deliver a blow city centre outlets will struggle to recover from.

I never got over the departure of Woolies from Bridge Street. Since then, Peterborough has been hit by a string of big names abandoning the city for a variety of reasons... HMV, Carluccio’s, Colemans... the list goes on. If we are to save the High Street, and nearly everybody says they want to, it is time for drastic action.

Now, I’m sure the bosses at Queensgate and Peterborough City Council, two of the major parking providers, would be reluctant to lose the valuable revenue stream from parking charges. But, if we keep haemorrhaging big names, these streams will turn to a trickle pretty soon.

It would be a radical and brave move, but our city centre is not going to prosper on a mixture of fountains and charity shops.

Of course, it wouldn’t be as simple as just scrapping parking charges. Office workers and people commuting to London would quickly gobble up the spaces and defeat the object.

But why not, for example, offer three hours free, or, in the case of Queensgate, make it free if you spend £20 in the centre’s stores?

Somebody Tweeted the following this week: The more people we attract to our city, the more money generated for local businesses.

Guess who it was?

It was Peterborough City Council. Over to you, folks.