Wiltshire Council have no authority to make supermarkets make their customers pay to park, but I did hear they will try to reduce parking spaces on future planning applications (presumably to try to force more shoppers to park in Wiltshire Council car parks)!
Would you prefer car parking - and the associated charges - were controlled entirely by private companies?
In that model, no council - whether town, county, district or unitary - would have any say over charges set to shoppers.....
Tag,
I would rather see no car park in private hands where charges are made as these generate only profit. However, the Shires is managed privately as are many supermarket car parks and these are cheaper if not
free, albeit for a shorter period. I don't know who sets the charges - I doubt it is the company enforcing the parking!
Let's look at Trowbridge - Tesco is by far the largest car park and is free for what, 2 hours? Tesco have to maintain that car park, and enforce parking, but the vast majority are customers of Tesco so that probably generates enough shopping profit to offset the car park costs. Also, in Trowbridge the car parks owned by Wiltshire Council are the small one in Castle St/Place and one at Lovemead (hardly a town centre car park). The multi story near the Civic Hall is public but, due to a deed of covenant no charges can be made for its' use. All the other car parks are owned by the stores or the Development companies that lease out these stores. Their charges are reasonable for shoppers, i.e. for up to about 4 hours (high for all day parking).
Therefore the impact of the Wiltshire Council car park charges is not going to be so high in Trowbridge as some other Wiltshire towns. Here in Westbury we have the Morrisons car park (what 1.5 or 2 hours?) and the Co-op with no limit on time (although I am sure if this was abused changes would be made) although for many people the Co-op is too far to walk into town. Warminster have only one private car park in the town centre, that near Iceland although I suppose Lidl and Argos, etc car parks are not too far away.
One of the things I really objected too is that people who
pay to park, are being used to meet the costs of the Enforcement Officers who also enforce on street parking. To me this is wrong. If they must employ these officers, let the offenders pay. I would imagine ticketing
everybody who parks on the double yellow lines outside Lloyds, for example, which is also parking in a dangerous position due to the junction would soon meet the cost of the officers.
Reduce the cost of legal parking - Increase the penalties for illegal parking (and enforce the law)!
