TRAFFIC and parking are an increasing issue in Cornwall and an upcoming town centre parking review hopes to establish the problems and create proposals to find solutions.

One of the seven areas that have been identified by Cornwall Council as having the ‘biggest parking problem’ is Bude.

In earlier consultations it was established, through surveying the public, that the issue of parking was most prevalent in Bude, Falmouth and Penryn, Newquay, Penzance and Newlyn, St Ives, Truro and Wadebridge.

Out of the thousands surveyed across these areas, 1,838 residents (42%) responded to the survey saying they had problems parking near their homes in the daytime, and nearly as many said the same of evenings.

The parking proposals are being brought forward to the council after the huge consultation exercise they carried out in the seven areas, which took many months.

During that time the council heard from nearly 7,000 thousand residents, visitors and businesses.

A further consultation was scheduled to take place on Wednesday, September 14, after the Post went to press to discuss possible proposals for parking solutions to the problems raised in the initial surveys.

A spokesperson said: “There will never be a widely accepted solution which solves all the problems, but the approach we’re taking with these proposals is sensible, pragmatic, and will reflect the particular local circumstances in each of the seven areas which have been identified as having the biggest parking problems.”

During their initial surveys the council spoke to members of the public, including residents, business owners and visitors, regarding what parking issues have been affecting them.

In several of the areas the council visited, residents told them that commuters were crowding all the parking spaces near their homes — however, commuters said that they could not find convenient or affordable parking spaces.

The council also discovered that shoppers are not able to use some of the spaces on streets in towns with shopping areas, like Bude, as others are occupying them. The availability of convenient on street parking for the public to pop into shops, like the local bank or post office, is being restricted.

The spokesperson said: “This situation is set to just get worse and doing nothing would be irresponsible.

“Not every town is facing a big problem, so not everywhere needs an intervention — though we do need to keep an eye on the situation to make sure that something introduced in one neighbourhood doesn’t then create a problem in another.”

The cabinet discussed the town centre parking review yesterday. Proposals were put forward to them with suggestions of how the council can move forward to find solutions to the issues facing towns like Bude.

The proposals put forward to the council’s cabinet that are agreed upon will be taken forward to a further round of discussions to create more detailed outline schemes.

These will be drawn up for the seven areas between October and December 2016.

Any schemes that are amended as a result of those discussions would then come forward on a phased basis, with any schemes decided on for Bude starting in October 2018 and being put in place by April 2019.