The Parking & Accessibility sub group of the BID board has developed a report detailing all the key issues in the town centre relating to parking. This took on board recent feedback from businesses and the public.
The idea of the report was to demonstrate to East Herts Council the issues our visitors and workers are facing daily and how this is impacting on business.
Within the report we came up with a number of recommendations, some of which we believe can be looked at and implemented in a short timescale, others will require longer term planning. You can read the report in full here.
The report also included a section on the recent consultation regarding Sunday charging, evening charging and the removal of the 30 min free parking within car parks. The BID strongly objected to this and submitted our response as such and encouraged other businesses to respond. East Herts have taken now looked at all the responses and are putting forward the following recommendations:
“After careful consideration of the feedback received, the council’s Executive will review a revised set of plans, which seek to balance financial constraints with the concerns raised. The report recommends deferring the removal of free parking periods, introducing Sunday charging – but at a flat ‘all day’ rate – and putting evening charges in place up to 8pm.“
You can read the letter to all consultees here and read the full press release here.
The next step is at a meeting on Tuesday 25 October this will be discussed by the Executive Committee and a final decision made.
This week, on Monday 17 October, Karen, Chair of the BID and Gina, BID Manager met with East Herts Head of Operations and Parking Services Manager to discuss the report and our recommendations. We are pleased to say it was a positive meeting and they are looking at a number of our suggestions, including trying to find a way to make permit parking for town centre workers possible.
We’ll keep you informed of the progress we make here.
