WEST Devon Borough Council has announced that it is going ahead with new car parking charges across the borough — with a much criticised increase to the popular £2 all day charge across several of its long stay car parks.

After a 21-day consultation period which ended on June 1, the borough council said it would implement the new charges in its car parks in Okehampton, Tavistock, Hatherleigh and Chagford.

Among the changes is an increase in the all-day tariff at Tavistock’s Bedford and Brook Street car parks and Okehampton’s Mill Road car park from £2 to £2.50. The £2 charge was introduced to stimulate trade in both towns and had largely been seen as a success, particularly in Tavistock.

The council stated that the last car parking charge increase was five years ago and since then the cost of delivering parking services in the public realm had increased. In addition to this, it said that Central Government had reduced the amount of grant it gives to the borough council to help run its services from £5-million to zero.

The council is facing a £900,000 funding gap by 2020/21, with that gap forecast to grow to £3.4-million over the next five years.

The ever increasing gap is largely due to the cuts in central government funding and the council has projected that these increases could generate an extra £180,000 annually.

Critics from the business community have said that the increase in charges is purely to raise income, but the council claims that benchmarking work shows that the council currently operates car parking charges lower than those used in similar communities and any increases are part of ‘reasonable setting of car parking tariffs’.

Cllr Robert Sampson, West Devon Borough Council’s lead member for commercial services, said: ‘When making a decision such as this one, we have to take into account the public realm surrounding the car parks and the services in those realms, like street cleansing, public toilets, and ground maintenance.

‘All of these services are an added cost to the running of the car parks and, unfortunately as those costs have risen over the years, we now need to increase our car parking charges to make sure that we can continue to provide a high standard of parking services to our residents.’

Tavistock Business Improvement District, which helped secure the £2 all-day tariff within the town, said it was disappointed with the borough council’s decision.

BID chairman Robin Rich said: ‘We at the BID tirelessly fought against this increase and we accept it with a heavy heart.

‘It’s disappointing — we have tried all avenues to not have the increase.

‘It’s not a massive increase and we are still the cheapest in the country but it’s the principle of why they have done this.

‘The deal has been done and we have no more wiggle room other than to accept — we will be monitoring it and keeping an eye on what is going on.’

The pay and display charges will come into effect on July 2.

To view the full list of the new charges, visit www.westdevon.gov.uk/article/3052/Car-Park-Locations