Fines take cash from local businesses

COVIDIOTS has been the headline when people released from lockdown have flocked to popular parts of north Wales for a breath of fresh air, only to find nowhere to park and then leaving their cars in dangerous illegal places while they go for a walk.

Push the parking penalty up to much higher levels is the cry from the councils – that’ll stop the idiots. But will it?

When the choice is between queueing for the occasional parkand-ride public bus when use of buses is discouraged because you may catch the virus, and going straight from your car into a wideopen space, it is clear what many people will choose: they’d much rather a fine than catch Covid-19.

Returning to your car and finding a ticket is no laughing matter, but it certainly causes visitor resentment. Also, that £60 or so which you had put aside to get food in a café or a pub locally or buy clothes or gifts from local shops is now going to pay the fine. Every time a policeman puts a ticket on a car he takes at least that amount of money away from local businesses.

The solution is to increase the number of parking places near to the popular spots. There is plenty of room in fields and extended laybys alongside the A4086 near Snowdon and the A5 in the Ogwen Valley to cope with all the cars, just as we manage all the parking for the various local shows in normal years. At Moel Famau there are miles of forestry roads which could easily be brought into use for occasional parking.

As Welsh tourism bosses claim that Wales is good to go, it is time for councils to get together with

landowners and work out a solution which accepts the need for more parking spaces in this post-Covid world.

David Owen Denbigh