PARKING IN TAMESIDE

In Tameside, we are told that the Council spends lots of money trying to encourage new businesses to set up in the town centres and are working tirelessly in trying to encourage people to come in and work and to spend money, but they appear to have another department which is doing its very best to make this difficult for those who drive, and try to park.

 

The Head of the ‘Parking Department’, at some time in the past, must have decided that it would be a good idea to make drivers predict in advance how long they wish to park, and to buy that amount of time when they park the vehicle. This deliberate measure is obviously intended to put those drivers under pressure whilst conducting business or simply spending money in the shopping centre. Should it turn out to be more time consuming to conclude your business or find the items that you want to buy, or if there are crowds and queues, your friendly neighbourhood council will fine you £60 for the privilege! 

One can only presume that this must be a deliberate policy designed to swell the coffers of the council, otherwise the Head of the ‘Parking Department’ would have been instructed to install a different type of payment machine; machines that would allow drivers to pay on return for the amount of time they had parked their vehicle. But of course this would help the shopper, and help promote the shops and businesses, and that’s not his/her Department!

It is high time councils remembered that council car parks, on and off street, are in fact public services that assist the public. Many car parks are on public land, and should be run for us, the public. Therefore, parking charges should only be allowed on a “pay on return” basis not pre-paid. And as for issuing a fine of £60+ for just a few minutes overstay, is unjust, unfair and tantamount to 'highway robbery!' After all, you don’t offer money back for those who only stay a few minutes!

Is it any wonder that our towns are empty when the local council fines people large sums of money for staying too long at the shops; it is no wonder that Tameside’s retailers are struggling.

But when you look closely, you’ll see that this is a microcosm of the public sector as a whole. Increasingly expensive, unresponsive and predatory. If we continue on the path we are on, we will end up with ghost town centres and a loss of the specialist independent shop.

Deputy Council Leader, Cllr John Taylor, tells us almost weekly his views on Banker Bonuses, but he might be a better employed if he commented on the extremes of expenditure a little closer to home. Our councils seem to be as badly run as the banks. If they have rights of legal taxation and the power to impose draconian fines, the salaries of their senior managers need such control too.

Still when you have many renamed council clerks or CEO’s awarding themselves more than the Prime Minister; and lets not forget about the multi-£million pension pots and full time Trade Union Officials which council tax payers have to fund, the extra money has to come from somewhere, otherwise some might question the councils spending.

If the coalition is serious about austerity  measures, it needs to start removing the very dubious council overheads and putting proper upper wage controls in place and forcing mergers to take out layers of duplicated top management and paying expenses to councillors in triplicate. Until that happens, and councils come to realise that their chaotic Town Centre refurbishments’ and parking plans are causing people to spend their money in surrounding towns, out-of-town shopping centres and via the internet; small market towns, like those that make-up Tameside, will continue to decline.