Oswestry free car parking plan scuppered
Thursday 8th July 2010, 1:39PM BST.
A plan to allow free parking for shoppers and visitors to the historic market town of Oswestry during its inaugural Traders’ Day has been rejected.
Town councillors said the move could actually damage the event as it would lead to town council owned car parks getting clogged up all day, stopping a regular turnover of customers at the day-long celebration.
The plea for free parking came from the Oswestry Traders’ Group, which has organised the first Traders’ Day for July 31 and has encouraged more than 60 small independent businesses to take part.
The group said free parking would encourage people to come into Oswestry.
But at last night’s town council markets and car parks committee meeting, members said they believed the opposite would happen.
Councillor Betty Gull said she was concerned about the loss of parking income of about £2,000 but also the move could backfire.
She said: “The organisers would be shooting themselves in the foot. Instead of having a turnover of visitors you would have people staying all day.”
Councillor John Evans said two years ago the town council offered free parking to Christmas shoppers and people were “just backlogging the place up”.
He said: “Our parking fees are not extortionate.”
Councillor Martin Bennett said: “Our evidence is free parking doesn’t encourage shoppers, it just encourages long stay parking.
“In effect it sterilises the parking places because they don’t turn over. There is evidence of that in other market towns in Shropshire which do have free parking.
“The majority of people want to come in, park, shop and then leave, allowing somebody else to come in, park and shop.”
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What a load of rubbish! I think It should of said, we would loose our income from these car parks.
The only people i see using them would be the shop keepers and there staff,who would have to pay otherwise, surly that is not the spaces then taken up, and if people stay all day, well isnt that a good thing, they must be spending money in the shops, Oswestry is not that big, it takes all day to go round the shops etc….
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