New discount parking scheme criticised for choice of car parks

The resident parking discount scheme came under fire from opposition councillors at a meeting on Thursday – due to the choice of car parks.

The discount parking scheme, which replaces the previous Advantage Card system, will allow one hour of free parking to residents from April 4, via the RingGo service, across six car parks in Datchet, Eton, Maidenhead and Windsor.

There will be two such car parks each in Windsor and Maidenhead, including Grove Road and West Street.

Applications opened on February 14, with 1,000 applications completed within the first day, said Neil Walter, the Borough’s parking manager.

So far there have been 4,500 applications for the resident discount scheme, all but one of which have been completed.

More than 2,000 new RingGo accounts and 2,000 vehicles have been registered. The Borough predicts that there will be 8,000-10,000 applications made by the April launch.

There have been five drop-in sessions at the Borough’s libraries to help resident navigate the applications process and the RingGo system.

New signage will be appearing in car parks in the next week, with two separate zones for general use and the resident parking discount.

The logic of the choice of West Street and Grove Road is the amount of usage these car parks already see.

There are 80 spaces in West Street and there were 4,000 one-hour tickets sold in February alone.

This compares to the 700 spaces in the Nicholson’s centre, where 7,000 one-hour tickets were issued, said Mr Walter.

“The turnover is massively outweighing the biggest car parks,” he said.

“We’re giving one hour of free parking in the two car parks where the vast majority of people choose to pay for one hour of parking.”

But Cllr Gurch Singh (Lib Dem, St Mary’s) raised concerns that the choice of car parks may not have been the right ones for this very reason.

“The problem with the scheme is the car parks chosen are very short stay,” he said.

“We want people to park their cars and increase the amount of time walking around the shops – that will increase business.

“We don’t need to direct people to West Street and Grove Road – they’re packed. We want to push people to these larger car parks. Those car parks are sitting empty.”

Cllr Phil Haseler lead member for planning, parking, highways and transport, said:

“Whereas all of us in the Borough would love to have some free parking in every single car park, we have to be realistic on the financial implications of that.

“This is a great pilot, a great way to start and we can assess it as we go forward. We shouldn’t be too dismissive.”

Cllr David Coppinger, lead member for Maidenhead, said:

“We’re doing something that’s fantastic for our residents and I get rather angry when people are knocking everything good we’re doing just for political points.

“The scheme will be reviewed and that has to be the closing point.”