OKEHAMPTON and District Chamber of Trade is challenging West Devon Borough Council’s suggestion that increasing car parking charges will help generate £180,000 to help plug the council’s budget gap.

At its meeting on Tuesday (February 20), the council agreed to attempt to increase car parking income by £180,000 — and the West Devon Car Park Strategy Group has been tasked with coming up with the means to achieve the target. This will almost certainly mean increases in parking tariffs, including the £2 a day tariff introduced to stimulate trade in Okehampton and Tavistock.

Current recom-mendations from the parking strategy group include a ‘greater range of tariffs being available in Mill Road, Okehampton’. The car park currently has two options — a 50p charge for half an hour, or £2 for all day parking.

The group also recommends an increase of the current £2 all day tariff in Tavistock to £2.50 and improved signage and better marketing of the car parks to try and increase usage.

Potential increases have caused concern with Okehampton’s chamber of trade and the town‘s Waitrose store, which sits next to the council’s Market Street car park. The council has stressed that it will ‘take into account’ the opinions of local communities when discussing tariff options.

It is understood that the council may not legally increase tariffs to raise an income to balance its budget but the council has said this was never the intention, claiming 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.

Linda Harper, chair of Okehampton and District Chamber of Trade, said: ‘We have compiled a letter to Cllr Saunders to challenge the suggestion that an increase in parking charges will result in increased revenue.

‘We are proposing a change of tariff for Mill Road car park to encourage better usage, along with improved signage. We propose that the tariff is changed from the current 50p for half an hour to £1 for two hours and to keep the current £2 charge for all day. 

‘We have been in discussions with Cllr Kevin Ball regarding improved signage and hope to have a positive outcome on this in due course. We do not believe that an increase in charges will be beneficial to the town.

‘We also have concerns about the impact that this will have on Waitrose, which currently refunds the first hour’s parking for those that spend £10 in store.

‘The additional costs to them would have a huge impact and it would be a tremendous loss to the town if we were to lose Waitrose. We also have concerns about the council filling a budget deficit through increases to parking charges; both the Tavistock BID and Okehampton Chamber have asked the council to provide evidence that this is in fact legal.’

Waitrose manager Mike Bestwick said: ‘We were represented at the council’s strategy group meeting, along with other business users as well, and of course we are not in favour of any car parking charge increases because of the potentially negative impact on trade in the town centre. We would be concerned about the impact of any increases in parking charges.’

The topic will be discussed at the borough council’s next hub committee on March 13.