Colchester town centre parking fees will not rise next year (From Gazette)

I'm sure people will flock in to Colchester to see all the scruffy empty shops and stained pavements that the town has to offer just because parking charges have been frozen or even reduced. Did you detect a note of sarcasm in that comment? - so you should CBC. After years of spending a fortune in Colchester town centre shops I now avoid it totally and regularly shop elsewhere. I now use towns where the council's have got a good Park & Ride system, their town shops are not tatty and empty and there are proper shops not just coffee places & fast food establishments. Pull your socks up Colchester it's not just about parking!

Visitors are not 'forced' to pay exhorbitant parking fees. They may do it once, in order to get out of the car park. Whether they do it a second or third time is their choice. With their usual wisdom, the council is closing the castle for 18 months, without putting any other visitor interest in its place. So that puts paid to the heritage visitors. As to shopping, refer to the above comment. There are plenty of other places to go to shop.

So the charges will remain the same? 70p for 40 minutes and £1.70 for an 70 minutes, what a bargain!! Can Martin Hunt please sort out a system where the amount is rounded off to 50p, £1 or £1.50? Its a con that the charges are an amount that means people often have to put in more than the fee due to the silly figure.

CBC get in the real world..
The price of parking in Colchester is just a joke .Follow the forward thinking council of Tendring DC and make it free for the locals after 10.00 AM every day.
Many town centre shops are struggling and need all the help they can get.

Some help for the workers would be good too!!!!!

roger bacon wrote:
CBC get in the real world..
The price of parking in Colchester is just a joke .Follow the forward thinking council of Tendring DC and make it free for the locals after 10.00 AM every day.
Many town centre shops are struggling and need all the help they can get.

CBC workers (particularly the Parking Managers who define the costs I assume!) won't care - they get cheap parking Anyhow £1 all day!!!
If CBC can justify that their employees only pay this amount to park surely it should practice what it preaches and everyone should pay the same????

Jo Churchill wrote:
Some help for the workers would be good too!!!!!

They only help CBC workers! Stuff the rest of society!

Why should we all have to subsidise the minority of car drivers? Freeze the chareges, Martin Hunt, if you like, but don't reduce them.

charges

Boris wrote:
Why should we all have to subsidise the minority of car drivers? Freeze the chareges, Martin Hunt, if you like, but don't reduce them.

"Minority of car drivers" ????
And how are you subsidising them?

Boris misses the fact that the town's shopkeepers rely on these car drivers for their trade. A town cannot survive without commerce. CBC are happy to charge rates and rent from the shopkeepers but then slap them in the face by deterring people from coming to town by charging excessive amounts for shoppers to park. As somebody said earlier, follow Tendring's lead, make parking free for shoppers after 10am. Better still, provide a decent Park and Ride system so that car drivers have no reason to drive into town. Its not rocket science!

yum!yum! wrote:

Boris wrote:
Why should we all have to subsidise the minority of car drivers? Freeze the chareges, Martin Hunt, if you like, but don't reduce them.

"Minority of car drivers" ????
And how are you subsidising them?

The borough provides car parks on land which could otherwise be used for something more important, such as a decent bus station, or producing more revenue.

Sdapeze wrote:
Boris misses the fact that the town's shopkeepers rely on these car drivers for their trade. A town cannot survive without commerce. CBC are happy to charge rates and rent from the shopkeepers but then slap them in the face by deterring people from coming to town by charging excessive amounts for shoppers to park. As somebody said earlier, follow Tendring's lead, make parking free for shoppers after 10am. Better still, provide a decent Park and Ride system so that car drivers have no reason to drive into town. Its not rocket science!

The problem here is that we are not going to have a decent park and ride system, which would have four or five large peripheral car parks, to serve all points of the compass, served by frequent buses with clear routes into town. Instead all we are going to get is one car park on the northern fringe, with buses which will take forever to get through the traffic.
The only town with a successful park and ride that I know of is Cambridge, with 5 car parks. People use it because parking in the centre is very scarce and costs a minimum of £10. Also because tourists, unlike shoppers, don't carry huge quantities of goods. And Cambridge is a far stronger draw than Colchester for tourists.

Spot on Boris. But Colchester could be changed with the right leadership. Instead we have a heritage complacent council that sees heritage as an inconvenience. A result study was done in the Netherlands that went on to prove that, for every euro spent on heritage, three come back. On the back of heritage promotion comes the inevitable town centre boost. We are ruled by people devoid of vision.

Sdapeze wrote:
Boris misses the fact that the town's shopkeepers rely on these car drivers for their trade. A town cannot survive without commerce. CBC are happy to charge rates and rent from the shopkeepers but then slap them in the face by deterring people from coming to town by charging excessive amounts for shoppers to park. As somebody said earlier, follow Tendring's lead, make parking free for shoppers after 10am. Better still, provide a decent Park and Ride system so that car drivers have no reason to drive into town. Its not rocket science!

CBC collect rates on half of HMG and most shops are privately owned. So your statement makes no sense

Sorry Cap'n. Must have been taking the wrong pills when I wrote that. The town's shopkeepers deserve all they get from government. How dare they try to make a living, let alone a profit.

TheCaptain wrote:

Sdapeze wrote:
Boris misses the fact that the town's shopkeepers rely on these car drivers for their trade. A town cannot survive without commerce. CBC are happy to charge rates and rent from the shopkeepers but then slap them in the face by deterring people from coming to town by charging excessive amounts for shoppers to park. As somebody said earlier, follow Tendring's lead, make parking free for shoppers after 10am. Better still, provide a decent Park and Ride system so that car drivers have no reason to drive into town. Its not rocket science!

CBC collect rates on half of HMG and most shops are privately owned. So your statement makes no sense

I think you will find that the local council collect the Business tax for Essex County Council who filter the money back into all parts of Essex

Sdapeze wrote:
Spot on Boris. But Colchester could be changed with the right leadership. Instead we have a heritage complacent council that sees heritage as an inconvenience. A result study was done in the Netherlands that went on to prove that, for every euro spent on heritage, three come back. On the back of heritage promotion comes the inevitable town centre boost. We are ruled by people devoid of vision.

I agree with all of this. But what is needed is something like a 10-year plan with the necessary money behind it. Not the peanuts from Mary Portas, but serious millions to set up more park and ride sites, to take over Jumbo and run it as a tourist attraction, to re-open Tymperleys as a museum, and so on. And, of course, to open a bus station on the site of the Britannia car park.

Boris wrote:

Sdapeze wrote:
Spot on Boris. But Colchester could be changed with the right leadership. Instead we have a heritage complacent council that sees heritage as an inconvenience. A result study was done in the Netherlands that went on to prove that, for every euro spent on heritage, three come back. On the back of heritage promotion comes the inevitable town centre boost. We are ruled by people devoid of vision.

I agree with all of this. But what is needed is something like a 10-year plan with the necessary money behind it. Not the peanuts from Mary Portas, but serious millions to set up more park and ride sites, to take over Jumbo and run it as a tourist attraction, to re-open Tymperleys as a museum, and so on. And, of course, to open a bus station on the site of the Britannia car park.

Agree with that pretty much, but I fear you´re looking for joined-up thinking from a council which has shown no signs of being capable of it in many years. Park and ride is a must, at more than one site, and at a price which makes it attractive to use. Jumbo, yes, agree fully. That could be a major tourist site. Tymperleys, yes. The Roman Wall could be promoted and highlighted; at the moment, it seems viewed almost as an inconvenient barrier to change. This town could be like York or Chester, but I am sure there are elements in the council who would rather we had nothing of historical interest in the town at all, because then they could stick up sterile shopping centres without the pesky natives complaining.

roger bacon wrote:

TheCaptain wrote:

Sdapeze wrote:
Boris misses the fact that the town's shopkeepers rely on these car drivers for their trade. A town cannot survive without commerce. CBC are happy to charge rates and rent from the shopkeepers but then slap them in the face by deterring people from coming to town by charging excessive amounts for shoppers to park. As somebody said earlier, follow Tendring's lead, make parking free for shoppers after 10am. Better still, provide a decent Park and Ride system so that car drivers have no reason to drive into town. Its not rocket science!

CBC collect rates on half of HMG and most shops are privately owned. So your statement makes no sense

I think you will find that the local council collect the Business tax for Essex County Council who filter the money back into all parts of Essex

All business rates go to central goverment not the borough or county councils. The money is then returned in the dwindling grants to local coucils in Essex. It also subsidises other parts of the country.