There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Is there such a thing
as free parking? Well of course there is. In Silverhill, Ore
Village or Central St Leonards where the shops are very much local small
businesses. But in every town of our size the main town centre and tourist
areas are charged.
If the town centre wasn’t charged and controlled the parking
spaces would be filled all day by people who work in the town centre or by
commuters – there would be no room for shoppers or visitors. It would be the
worst possible result for shops big and small.
The whole theory of parking is to encourage drivers to come
to the town centre to combine a number of activities in the same visit, rather
than keep coming back, costing them petrol for each task. So you come to town to
go to the bank, look round the shops, visit the hair dresser and have a coffee
all in one trip and park in an off-street car park for a couple of hours to do
it all.
If you really need to nip to town for a single activity,
like picking up a prescription or paying in a cheque, and want to park for 20
or 30 minutes then you park on the streets and pay at the meters. These meters
are the responsibility of East Sussex County Council.
So what about the idea of Hastings Borough Council making
the first 30 minutes free in its car parks. I’m not sure it would help the
really short-term parker. The walk from a car park back and forth to the
chemist might take half the 30 minutes; if you had to queue when you got there
you’d be in trouble.
Car parks are for longer staying visitors and businesses
want people to stay longer. Cafes don’t want you in town for half an hour, they
want you to relax. The shopping centre doesn’t want you for half an hour they
want you to wander around the shops. And 30 minutes would definitely not be
enough time for parking in a car park, walking to the hairdressers and then
having the appointment. It wouldn’t be long enough to enjoy the ice rink as
11,000 people did at Xmas.
The best thing for business prosperity is that we park and
then stay in the town centre for longer.
So is the free 30 minutes merely a way round getting cheaper
car park charges? If so how do Hastings
charges compare to our neighbours. For one hour’s parking Hastings Borough
Council’s town centre car parks are 10p more expensive than Eastbourne’s
Arndale Centre; but for two hours 20p cheaper.
Of course the truth is no-one pays for a three litres of
petrol to drive to Eastbourne because the car
park charges might be cheaper.
The reason we shop locally or go elsewhere is the quality of
what is on offer. We are just about to see a £2 million refurbishment of Priory
Meadow including the arrival of a large new, nationally popular store trading
on two floors. Hastings
town centre has less empty shops than the national average and the number of
people going into our shopping centre is holding up well against other places.
So what’s the financial impact of the free 30 minutes idea?
If it was introduced in Hastings Borough Council’s car parks the loss of income
would be equivalent to a 2% rise in the council tax - so I suppose you could
take your choice.
For the coming financial year the council is freezing the
council tax and freezing its car park charges. In the financial climate when we
have lost 50% of our government grant to run the town that is about the best
any of us could expect.
