Car parking needs review (From Malvern Gazette)

Car parking needs review

12:15pm Friday 3rd February 2012 in Letters

IN view of the considerable concern about the district council plans for increasing car parking charges in Malvern, I would like to explain the position of Malvern Civic Society.

l. Our remit in the town is ‘history and heritage’. We want the town to protect its ambience and old buildings. This is not just an academic aspiration – it is a question of money and prosperity if we expect shopkeepers to be able to afford to paint their premises. That means that shops have to have customers to make a profit to paint the buildings.

2. The society has aspirations in achieving European or World Heritage status for our Victorian spa town; that will be a much more difficult objective unless we have the enthusiastic support of both district and town councils.

We would like to see the question of car parking reviewed with the objective of encouraging more visitors to the town. That mean we must have minimal parking charges with free allowances for short term visits. It means more parking spaces in the town in the right place – people will not walk uphill to shop.

What we perceive as the right solution to the problem needs decisions to be made by the right people who live or work in the town – many of the district councillors do not necessarily come to Malvern very often.

Decisions affecting Malvern should increasingly be made, or at least approved, by the town council; they have the interests of the people of Malvern at heart and understand the problems of the town.

ROGER SUTTON
Chairman, Malvern Civic Society