Tilehurst Car Park Charges – time is running out

With time running out before the new car park charges are implemented at the end of the month, I have written again to Cllr Page (the Lead Councillor for Transport) appealing to him to re-think these charges which could seriously damage trade for local shopkeepers in Tilehurst. Last month I helped the traders present a petition with over 2,200 signatures to Cabinet as the council was planning to do away with the free first hour parking in Recreation Road and Dunstall Close car parks.

This Labour Council says it wants to encourage local shopping centres but then hits Tilehurst with these car park charges. They have offered to keep just the first 30 minutes free but this is not enough for many elderly folk to do their shopping and they are a large percentage of local customers.

The council just does not see the potential losses for traders in The Triangle if shoppers prefer driving down to Sainsbury’s rather than using local shops.

This is no way to encourage local businesses in the middle of a serious recession.

Tory Tricks in Tilehurst

Yesterday I was shown a leaflet put out by the Tories in Tilehurst in which they claim that Sandra Vickers is ‘leading a petition to reverse the [car park] charges’.

Well excuse me for raising a discordant note but I was under the impression that it was the local traders themselves who organised the petition and, indeed, presented it to the council. It was I who first wrote to the press about the changes to the car park charges and it was I who arranged for the petition to be presented to the council’s Cabinet where the Leader of the Council was forced to publicly back down from the original proposals. Oh and I also wrote in previous blogs in support of the campaign.

In short we can all make exaggerated claims in leaflets but this ludicrous claim is an insult to Tilehurst’s shopkeepers and will only serve to lower the reputation of all of us local councillors who try to support our local communities.

Cllr Vickers may be new on the scene but she has enough old heads around to advise her that misleading the public is never a good idea.

Update on Tilehurst Car Park Charges

Well, a delegation of traders from Tilehurst along with myself and other local councillors presented their petition this evening to the Council’s Cabinet. When you realise that there were 2,200 signatures on the petition which were collected in just two weeks, you will understand the depth of feeling over the proposed new car park charges in Tilehurst. Roger Kent, who owns a shop in Norcot Road, presented the petition and explained the depth of feeling amongst local traders against the withdrawal of the first hour free car parking, and the likely effect on their trade.

Leader of the Council, Cllr Jo Lovelock, responded and offered to retain 30 minutes free parking and to look at ways of refunding shoppers car park charges if they bought a certain amount of goods.

None of us were at all happy with the Council’s new proposal and will be taking up the Council’s offer to discuss the car park charges with Cllr Page, the Lead Councillor for Transport (when he returns from holiday).

In the meantime, the council has agreed to hold back on the new charges until this discussion has taken place.

My advice to the shopkeepers is to hold firm and explain to Cllr Page that doing away with one hour’s free parking is no way to support local shopping centres. We are very proud of our local shops in Tilehurst, and especially of the fact that almost all of them are real independent local traders, not branches of big chains. I will certainly do my best to support them and with 2,200 Tilehurst residents also supporting them I think we have a very good case to put forward.

Well done to the Tilehurst traders for organising the petition.

Today was a victory for local shops in Tilehurst but the campaign is far from over yet.

Tilehurst Car Parks

It seems that residents still do not appreciate that much of the parking in Tilehurst car parks is actually free of charge.  The charges in Recreation Road and Dunstall Close car parks only apply after the first hour and only between 10:00 and 15:00 Monday to Saturday. To park for free during these peak hours just take a ticket and display in your car window and you will have a hour’s free parking.

The problem is that NCP who run the car park on behalf of the council, do not advertise the fact that the first hour is free or that they only charge between 10:00 and 15:00. After all, what’s in it for them to advertise free parking. However the lack of advertising puts people off using these car parks as people assume that they are going to have to pay and then start looking around for free spaces on the roads behind the shops in Tilehurst.