Shropshire Star

'Short-sighted': Tourism chiefs call for council rethink on parking charges plan

An organisation that represents tourism and hospitality businesses in Shrewsbury today called on Shropshire Council to rethink its draft parking strategy.

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Frankwell Car Park in Shrewsbury

Shrewsbury Tourism believes the council’s future parking plans, which are open to public consultation until the end of September, will have a detrimental impact on the local economy and rate paying businesses.

The proposed higher parking charges – up to £2.50 an hour in the town centre – will make Shrewsbury less attractive as a visitor destination, warns Shrewsbury Tourism’s chairman Edward Goddard.

Instead of attracting more people to the town centre, the draft proposals risk doing the complete opposite and undermine the council’s wider aims for economic growth in the county.

“The overall aims of the parking strategy appear to be to keep traffic flows and parking in the town centre from increasing,” he said. “Surely this premise runs counter to the council's economic strategy to increase the attractiveness of Shropshire's market towns as visitor destinations?

“Having done so much to promote the local economy, I am sure the council would not want to undermine its own efforts to increase visitor numbers by allowing a technical focus on reducing demand for parking spaces to blind it to its wider economic strategy.”

Mr Goddard said the council appears to be using the draft parking strategy as a traffic management tool to reduce visitor numbers arriving by car while at the same time raising money at the expense of the local economy.

“This is short-sighted as the income from parking charges is dwarfed by income from business rates,” he added.

“Higher parking charges on businesses that rely on attracting visitors to Shropshire will have a strongly negative impact on the council's non-domestic rates if more town centre businesses close down in consequence. The growth in charity shops and other low rateable value units illustrates the problem.”

Shrewsbury Tourism is concerned that increasing parking charges up to £2.50 an hour will hasten the demise of the town centre by driving shoppers to alternative shopping venues at Battlefield and Telford where parking is easier and cheaper.

Mr Goddard said Shrewsbury should copy the historic towns of York and Oxford by taking steps to attract more visitors to the town centre.

“There is no necessity to hold the numbers visiting by car at a constant level,” he added. “It is short-sighted to reduce the attractiveness of our greatest assets just to avoid accommodating a growth in visitor numbers. Other market towns have had great visions and achieved great things. There is no reason why Shropshire Council cannot do likewise.”

He urged the council to consider other options in Shrewsbury such as building a new multi-storey car park on one of the existing parking sites at St Julian’s Friars or Frankwell to support its vision for a vibrant town centre.

“I wish to register a strong objection to the draft parking strategy as being too limited in its ambitions,” he concluded. “This sells the county short and undermines attempts by local businesses to grow and attract more visitors.”