Free car parking could be extended to allow for longer visits to the hairdressers

The maximum stay in Middle Road car park is currently two hours, but Fareham Borough Council is now looking at extending that to three hours. It comes after a petition, organised by a local hairdressers, garnered 357 signatures calling on the council to extend the maximum stay. Councillors agreed that some hairdressing treatments needed longer than two hours and a three-hour maximum would make the experience more pleasurable.

Stubbington ward’s councillor Jacquie Needham (Conservative), said that sitting in a hairdressers and worrying that you only had two hours was stressful.

Councillor Tina Ellis (Conservative, Fareham West) and councillor Katrina Trott (Lib Dems, Fareham East) agreed saying clock-watching was stressful and Coun Tiffany Harper (Conservative, Titchfield) said that she felt the mix of parking times, such as an hour on-street and longer in car parks, worked for the type of shops along Middle Street and access to services for the village centre.

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Park Gate’s ward councillor Ian Batable (Conservative) said he carried out a survey by talking to the businesses along Middle Road. He said there was a ‘spread of opinion’ and the responses varied from not being aware there was free parking, to the baker’s customers going in and out quickly while the estate agent and hairdressers needed longer for their customers to use their services. He told the Health and Public Protection Scrutiny Panel on January 24 that there were also concerns workers would take advantage of the longer time and reduce the number of spaces available to customers.

Councillor Bastable said: “It didn’t seem there was a clamour from one way or the other but we have a petition here in front of us. One thing the shops were concerned about was that actually increasing it to three hours would actually make it easier for people working in the shops to park there for three hours and then somewhere else.”

Bald chairman councillor Michael Ford joked that he never went to the hairdressers so left it to other members of the panel to decide the length of time for hairdressing appointments. The panel also heard that over the past six years, there has been a very low level of parking fines in the car park, with only 43 fines issued in 2023, 45 in 2022 and 34 in 2021.

The panel’s recommendation to increase the free parking time from two to three hours will now be considered at an executive meeting on 24 March 2024. If successful, the change will then be subject to a 21-day public consultation.