Good news on parking

Just back from speaking at the Cabinet (Traffic and Parking) Committee at the City Council – and there’s good news.

George Beckett and the Council have listened to local people and local businesses on the proposed parking changes and decided not to press ahead with ‘Pay and Display’ instead of ‘Pay on Foot’. All credit to them.

At the meeting, I took them through a survey we recently completed on parking: 94% of car park users that returned our survey were opposed to changing the system.

People like the current system.  It means they don’t have the same pressure to rush back to the car and it gives them more chance to stay longer in Winchester. And that, in turn, is good for local businesses.

It was clear from the survey that the problems with pay on foot have also been overstated.  Although a majority of people in the survey have had a problem at some point or another, it happens to most people very infrequently. And when things do go wrong, they told us that Winchester’s parking attendants do an excellent, prompt and effective job in sorting out problems in the overwhelming majority of cases.