CAMELFORD Town Council has stressed that it is not looking to install parking charges in Churchfield car park, but are aiming to find a solution to people parking over their time limit on the site, writes Rosie Cripps.

The Post recently reported that due to the capacity of Churchfield car park, the town council is currently looking into installing ticket machines to establish when cars have overstayed their allocated time.

At a recent meeting of the town council, it was suggested having a survey for the car park and the neighbourhood plan and, to save money, to put these two items in ‘the same envelope’.

Cllr Alan Burgis disagreed with a survey adding: “The way it’s being presented at the moment, it looks like the town council is supporting car park charges.”

In reply, Cllr Rob Rotchell, mayor, said: “The town council is not looking for support to introducing charges. We’re saying to people to help us with the decision; there’s been a definite misinterpretation of what’s going on.

“The car park is a shopper’s car park. The number of dwellings in Camelford, and the number of retailers turning into dwellings with no private parking, means people have nowhere to park, so park in Churchfield. The car park is at a capacity, we all know that. We’re asking the question, how do we solve the problem?”

Cllr Burgis said: “We’re giving people options, but we’re not giving them all the options. Could we turn the car park into a short-stay car park?”

Town clerk, Esther Greig, explained that giving people a separate comments box on the survey would make the process ‘too difficult’. She said: “There’s about 4,000 people that are electors in this. What we’re doing is asking specific questions. We’re not having a comments box; it would make it too difficult to change the data.”

Cllr Rotchell said there has ‘got to be a way of monitoring the time limit’ on cars, to prevent people wanting to shop in the town to be turned away due to lack of spaces.

Cllr Peter Guesford said: “Why have we got different coloured boxes then? You can’t put a time limit on different boxes!”

Cllr Rotchell said: “There’s got to be a way of seeing what time a car has come in, and if they’re outside that time limit — the only way is a ticket.”

With 130 spaces in Churchfield car park, Cllr Guesford said that surely this is just a six-week a year problem. He added: “The car park is for the town. All we are is representatives of the town.”

Cllr Rotchell raised the issue of parking charges possibly driving visitors away from the town, but said: “There are so many houses that don’t have any private parking. You’ve bought a house without parking, and we, the town, are paying for your parking.”

Cllr Claire Hewlett was keen to stress the importance that ‘nothing is free’. She said: “Can we dismiss the idea that it’s free? It’s not, at all. We need to identify who is willing to contribute to the payment for the car park.”

She added that the council needs to be wary about ‘paying for people’ coming in outside of Camelford.

She said: “We could end up paying for the people outside of Camelford; we might be prepared to do that, as they’re coming in and spending their money in the town, we might be willing to do that — but we need to clarify that nothing is free.”

One suggestion, put forward by Cllr Aaron Dawe, uttered the importance of car sharing, particularly with Camelford’s current air quality issues.

Cllr Dawe told his peers: “I think as a town council we should be encouraging people to car share. We want to be environmentally friendly and cut pollution, so I think we should encourage green car sharing in our town, with our pollution issues.”

Although noting this as a good suggestion, Cllr Rotchell showed concern of this still leaving no room for local shoppers to park.

He said: “There are certain days of the week where it’s (the car park) full. If it’s full of people coming to car share, who are spending the day there, there will be no room for other local people just wanting to spend a short time in town.”

Cllr Guesford explained that even those travelling in a big group on coaches are unable to park anywhere, to which Cllr Rotchell replied saying that the car park once had three coach spaces, but the council made the decision to create more car spaces instead.

Cllr Burgis said: “If we’re to come up with a suggestion, whether it’s car sharing or coaches, are we willing to pay for that in precept too?”

Cllr Rotchell explained that with two loans already needing to be paid off, as well as a ‘huge amount of money’ still left to pay for Churchfield car park, Cllr Burgis’ suggestion would not be viable. He added: “Personally, I would be very reluctant to take that on.”

Speaking about the survey, Cllr Guesford said: “I do think we need to encourage people’s suggestions. Someone might have an idea that might resolve it.”

Speaking about the misunderstanding that has been strewed across social media during the last few weeks, with many local people believing the council will be introducing parking charges, Cllr Rotchell brought the discussion to a close, saying: “We knew it was going to be difficult. If something can be misinterpreted, it certainly has been.”