East Lindsey Car Parking - Back To Unfairness

I am sure that a lot of you will have heard about or seen that a recommendation is to be made by a Scrutiny Committee to the District Council with regard to removing car parking charges in some car parks. On the face of it this appears to be all good news and something to be welcomed but it is a return to unfairness.

Let me explain.

Prior to the last major change to car parking there were 14 car parks within the district that were free to park in. The rest of the approximately 58 car parks were charged. To my knowledge, there was no real basis for the fact that these 14 car parks were free. This was just an historical anomaly.

None of these original free car parks were in Skegness and that point had long been a matter of discontent amongst the local population and the local councillors alike, both District and Town councillors. When the car parking charges were revised and all car parks were charged then there were still no free car parks in Skegness but at least all other communities were being treated in the same way. An element of fairness had been achieved, although there were still one or two anomalies.

This fairness issue was considered when, subsequently, the charging at some car parks was changed to allow for 2 hours of free car parking. Every community benefited from the changes as every community had a non-centrally located car park with 2 hours free parking. Fairness!

It is now proposed that car parking charges will be removed but unfortunately only in those 14 car parks that were once free to park in! Why? Why only those car parks? Why will only some of the communities within the District benefit from this? Why are some of the most deprived communities in the District not going to benefit from free parking whilst some of the most affluent are? Where is the fairness in that? Why will some town and village centres and the businesses in them benefit whilst other town centres won't? This is truly a retrograde recommendation.

I sincerely hope that the District Councillors that represent Skegness, of all parties, will oppose this recommendation unless the fairness issue is addressed and I hope they will be joined by their colleagues who represent other communities who will also be treated unfairly if this recommendation is accepted and then sanctioned by the Executive Committee. Time to stand up for your communities ladies and gentlemen!