Gosport to offer one-hour free parking in a move to 'bring life back into town centre'

Short-term car parks presently charge 60p for the first hour and another 40p to stay the maximum two hours.

Gosport Borough Council voted to offer one free hour of parking to residents and visitors who wish to use the town centre, before charging £1 for a two-hour stay.

The financial loss, estimated at £28,651 per year, will be accounted for by charging a 10.6 per cent increase at long-stay town-centre car parks.

Councillor Peter Chegwyn, Liberal Democrat leader of the council, said: ‘We are creating a slight increase in long-stay car parks in the town centre which we hope will discourage people from outside Gosport from driving in, clogging up our roads and car parks to go and shop in Portsmouth.

‘In an ideal world, I would scrap the car parking charges altogether, as we did before but we have been left with such a mess by the outgoing administration - £1.4m a per year budget deficit.

‘This proposal is aimed at bringing life back into our town centre, delivering on our investment pledge, helping to support traders and independent businesses.’

Conservative councillor Stephen Philpott told the Policy and Organisation board why he opposed the 10.6 per cent increase.

‘Long-stay car parks are used by people who work in the town centre, they’re not the highest paid people,’ he said.

‘You’ve got 378 existing spaces in the town centre that are free for one hour.

‘Not much use for traders, one hour, and for the second hour in the short stay car parks instead of 40p it’s going to cost £1 - a 150 per cent increase.

The new proposals also include charging all car parks between the hours of 8am-7pm - extending the charging periods for leisure and seafront car parks.

Cllr Philip Raefelli said that many residents use the seafront and leisure car parks outside of charging hours to exercise.

‘We all know how challenged Gosport is in terms of health and wellbeing, we have some of the worst obesity rates in the whole of England,’ he said.

‘Anything that discourages people from doing park walks really should be deprecated.’