Parking...yet again.

I'm aware the cabinet will have to do something about the Lib Dem motion for free parking on Saturday. Strange thing is that I'm told it's not coming before Cabinet until October, which seems like quite a long time to delay something that you're going to throw out.

But I'm sure it will go out, which is fine with me because none of the traders want it on a Saturday anyway. They would certainly be interested in something at lunchtimes or after 3pm. The feedback that I'm getting is that it's smaller, incidental trade that's far more important to them.

I've been doing a fair amount of work with local businesses, and the most wacky idea that they've come up with is that exit parking would be much better than pay and display. The more you consider this the more sense it makes. One of the traders said that she feels that her customers don't mind paying to park, but they don't like the hassle of having to have the correct change, and then they hate being criminalised for staying 5 minutes longer than they meant to. This is what brings the resentment that the council are at the wrong end of.

This is a fair point - can you imagine any other service where you get fined for using more than you expected to, without a chance to pay the extra?

I appreciate that there would be significant capital cost to convert car parks, but I genuinely think it's worth thinking about. We could probably save a couple of wardens, as I would expect they spend most of their time trawling round the car parks. You won't need them. You would need support for the barriers / machines etc but on the whole this can be managed remotely. They seem to manage it this way at the airport.

It takes the hassle away from shoppers because they won't have to rush back. They could then pay by card also, which makes life a lot easier for everyone involved.

And the best bit is this - I think we could then offer free parking for 30 minutes, and would still end up with higher parking revenue. This is because I think shoppers who previously would have got an hour ticket and rushed back when the time was nearly out would stay and have a coffee - knowing that all it'll cost them is an extra 40p. Similarly, shoppers would pop in to take advantage of the free half hour and would overstay. With any other system they'd get a fine for this, but with exit parking they've just pay the next rate.

I've written to David Brickhill about this and started some dialogue with the officers. They've not come up with a way of saying no yet, but I'm sure it'll come.