Letter: Possible loophole over parking fees?
Wednesday 4th May 2011, 6:00AM BST.
Letter: I was shocked and appalled to learn the council had decided to charge for all car parks in Market Drayton, even those which have been free after the revamp of town centre ones.
Having read the terms and conditions posted on the notices there seems to be a giant loophole.
If you have bought a ticket then, according to the notice, you mustn’t “purchase” another ticket to extend your stay.
Therefore since you can get a one-hour ticket free without purchasing it, you can, in theory, take one of these every hour.
Or you could extend for free a two-hour stay (after paying 10p) ad infinitum, as you cannot be said to purchase something if it’s being given away for free.
The free period should be three hours at least if these are ‘long stay’ car parks and a more reasonable charge of less than 40p/hr should be levied for the rest of the period, but certainly no more than £1.20 which is in the short stay car park.
There should be a campaign to stop councils introducing this as a way of getting money for nothing.
Is the aim of councils to kill off small town centres like Market Drayton, Newport, Whitchurch etc so they can sell them off to large development companies cheap and then give planning permission for monstrous shopping centres which we’ll all have to pay through the nose to visit and risk being clamped if we’re a minute late on the ticket?
I don’t visit Telford unless I can avoid parking charges as it costs too much in petrol. Even Market Drayton costs at least a litre of petrol at £1.33 locally.
Mr Wilson
Market Drayton
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Mr Wilson, how exactly are the council getting money for nothing when they introduce parking fees? They are providing a service and you have to expect to pay for it just as you would if it was a privately owned car park. Frankly, I am embarrassed on behalf of all these folk moaning about a 10p parking charges.
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Julian – Spot On. Mr Wilson – moan, moan & moan. Trying as best you can to throw mud at the Council that provide a service to suit every car park user and their own specific needs. Stop picking fault and trying to stir things for your own satisfaction.
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I’ve never understood why councils charge/people pay to park in these small towns anyway. You could just park in a suburban street for free and walk the whole 5-10 minutes to the town centre.
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Unfortunately some motorists have been parking in side roads for some time. They are oblivious to the residents and even park on the pavement blocking the house entrants for those that live there. Both Dairy Close and The Burgage suffer from these lazy selfish drivers – I would love to park blocking their driveways or access paths and see how they feel about it. If our council is going to persist with these parking charges I would like to see them investigate residents only parking schemes for the local roads. I for one would be willing to pay a small sum to allow my wife the privilege of parking outside our own house with bags of heavy shopping. I would also like to see our parking attendants issuing tickets to those ignorant drivers that park on our pavements forcing pedestrians to walk in the road for access.
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