Staff at Bike Business in Fratton Road, Portsmouth, were horrified when two spaces outside their shop were changed to 'blue badge holder only' parking by Portsmouth City Council – making it unuseable for their customers on motorbikes.
The News pub
lished their story on July 10 and the shop formed a petition, gaining more than 300 signatures from people and the support of their MP, Portsmouth South's Mike Hancock.
Now one of spaces has been turned back into a regular parking bay.
Manager of Bike Business, Martyn Saxton, 48, said: 'It is a victory for common sense. It has taken an awful amount of time.
'The business was down when the parking changed as people had to struggle across the busy road.
'The comments of people coming in the shop were that they thought it was ridiculous that the council had changed the parking outside a busy motor cycle shop to disabled.
'I knew that eventually they would have to change the parking back. The trouble is that the council are using taxpayers' money to do this.'
In response to the shop's complaint and petition Portsmouth City Council has said it will reduce the disabled parking to one bay. Originally it said the change had been brought in to benefit the whole road.
Ken Ellcome, the council's parking manager, said: 'Following concerns from the owner of the motorbike shop, we have monitored the usage of the disabled parking bays and have now reduced it to one space.
'We are satisfied that this measure will help both businesses and visitors in the area.'
The bike shop staff are now waiting for a date from the council to return the parking bay to non-disabled.
The full article contains 311 words and appears in NS-Fareham & Gosport newspaper.
