I HAVE watched with growing concern as the discussion around parking charges in Wiltshire as a whole and Salisbury in particular have degenerated into party politics, with some people manoeuvring for the up-coming General Election by making wild claims that are not backed up by any financial reality.

Parking charges are a very serious issue for the city. We have a single chance over the next three years to make changes to our parking tariffs to try to attract more visitors and shoppers to the city.

It is important however to note that our footfall is not in catastrophic decline as some politicians seem to like to claim, for example this year has seen an increase in Salisbury footfall for the first half of the year.

The one factor that is consistently being overlooked however is the financial one.

Wiltshire Council, like every other council in the country, faces a difficult financial position. We have got to save a further £120 million over the next three years (on top of huge savings in the last few years).

You can argue the causes of the cuts that central government has made until the cows come home but that does not change the fact they are happening and would happen under any political persuasion of government.

As a result of this any changes to parking need to be revenue-neutral.

The money that is made from parking goes straight back in to bus subsidies for the 27 per cent of residents in the Salisbury area who don’t have cars.

We have got to allow people from the villages to get into the city otherwise we are denying them the ability to work, something I am not willing to do.

Some of the claims that we can simply wave a wand and lower charges with no other impact are extremely naive.

There is also the question of congestion and air pollution in the city, which we need to consider. If we made parking free for example then I suspect the result would me much larger traffic jams and greater pollution.

This leaves us with a difficult position.

We, and I think I speak for most of Salisbury and the villages around it making this point, would like to see charges for city centre parking reduced, particularly the charges for the first three or maybe four hours.

Longer stay parking is further confused by the park and ride sites, which are slowly increasing in use but still do not break even. The albatross of park and ride around our neck (which will remain until they can at least break even) make it very difficult to lower parking charges as we have to cover the cost of running park and ride.

We could look to close some park and ride sites for a few years if central government would let us without demanding millions in subsidy back.

In the long run however, we will need park and ride to avoid Salisbury’s road network from grinding to a smog filled halt. I think that changes to park and ride have to be the way forward and there are several groups looking at how this can be delivered without waving party political flags.

As politicians at this point I think we need to do everything we can to help the BID and other groups to come up with a way to help make park and ride work so avoiding the subsidy and allowing other charges to be reduce as a result.

That is where I am currently putting my efforts to help address our parking charges.

What we need are sensible, well costed solutions, not ‘dynamic’ ideas which many sound good but will result in other services being cut.

Richard Clewer

Wiltshire Councillor St Paul's Ward Salisbury

Portfolio Holder for Housing