Seaside town ‘driving away tourists' with two-tier parking charges
Beck Gordon, who owns a cafe and fishmonger in Salcombe, south Devon, claims day-trippers have stopped visiting.
Owners of second homes, which make up about 60 per cent of the properties in this picturesque seaside town dubbed Chelsea-on-Sea, are already charged double council tax.
But now tourists have been hit with a differential parking scheme, after the Lib Dem-led council introduced a £10-a-day parking charge.
It means that while South Hams District Council is charging tourists up to £10 for a day's parking, locals can pay £5 for an annual permit that lets them use the town's car parks for £8 a day.
The town is reliant on tourists and some business owners fear they will now be dissuaded from visiting, with some reporting a much quieter Easter holiday than usual.
Ms Gordon said: 'It's quieter generally. The parking's definitely an issue.
'In terms of day-trippers, if you talk about more local people, they definitely don't come anymore.'
She revealed it was cheaper to pay for a parking ticket a week than to use the car park.
'Sometimes you get lucky and the parking guys don't come round for one or two days so you end up with maybe two parking tickets a week – but it's cheaper to pay for one or two parking tickets a week than it is to park in the car park, which is absolutely ridiculous.
'We probably pay anywhere between £25 and £50 a week in parking tickets whereas if we parked in the car park it would cost us £70.'
One cafe manager, who didn't want to be named, said she spends £120 of her wages on parking.
'It's affecting workers in the town. Because I park before 8am, I have to go for 24-hour parking at Creek car park, which is ridiculous. Yes, I can buy a parking permit, but that's so much money and I only work three days a week.'
Cllr Julian Brazil, executive leader of the council's community services, said: 'We'd like to do everything to help the tourism trade and we have kept our car parking charges as competitive as possible. Residents of the South Hams can benefit from our discounted resident parking scheme.
'Many workers in Salcombe have benefited from our competitive parking permits which offer significantly lower long-term parking compared to our pay on the day rates.
'Be under no illusion, we don't want to increase prices, but this is the best choice for us under the circumstances we find ourselves in.
'Our prices have been frozen for four years, and now everyone who benefits from our public services are being asked to contribute, and that includes our visitors.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
29 minutes ago
- The Independent
Badenoch says Truss ‘carries quite a lot blame' for Tory record of as war of words continues
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said Liz Truss 'carries quite a lot of' responsibility for the party's record amid a row over the party's direction. Responding after former prime minister Ms Truss accused her of 'repeating spurious narratives', Badenoch said she was 'very focused on what the Conservatives are going to do now'. The Leader of the Opposition faced questions about Ms Truss's claim that under the Conservatives, 'the economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by (Rishi) Sunak' and that 'the huge increase in immigration has been a disaster'. Mrs Badenoch told ITV Anglia: 'I know that, as a former prime minister and a former foreign secretary, (Ms Truss) carries quite a lot of that blame. 'The party's now under new leadership. 'I wasn't in charge during those 14 years; she was. 'That's a criticism she's probably levelling at herself.' The Tory leader also said she was 'telling the truth' about her party's record. 'I'm telling the truth that immigration was too high – that's why we have much tougher policies to fix immigration,' she continued. 'I am telling the truth that taxes were too high, that we were putting a lot of regulation on businesses, and what we're seeing is Labour making every single thing worse. 'They're doing that because they haven't learned many of the lessons that we learned. They haven't learned from our mistakes. They're making worse mistakes.' The Labour government's mistakes include making 'no cut in spending at all – the books were not balanced', Mrs Badenoch claimed. 'We're spending more on welfare than we are on defence – that cannot continue,' she said. Mrs Badenoch had previously told The Telegraph that 'for all their mocking of Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not learnt the lessons of the mini-budget and are making even bigger mistakes'. Ms Truss, who spent 49 days in Number 10, hit back when she said that 'instead of serious thinking', Mrs Badenoch was 'repeating spurious narratives'. She continued: 'I suspect she is doing this to divert from the real failures of 14 years of Conservative government in which her supporters are particularly implicated. 'It was a fatal mistake not to repeal Labour legislation like the Human Rights Act because the modernisers wanted to be the 'heirs to Blair'. 'Huge damage was done to our liberties through draconian lockdowns and enforcement championed by Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings. 'The economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by Sunak. The huge increase in immigration has been a disaster.' Mrs Badenoch also took questions about her identity, after she told the Rosebud podcast: 'I have not renewed my Nigerian passport, I think, not since the early 2000s. 'I don't identify with it any more, most of my life has been in the UK and I've just never felt the need to.' The North West Essex MP told ITV Anglia: 'I am definitely an Essex girl, that is a fact.' A London Assembly member before she took her Commons seat in 2017, Mrs Badenoch said: 'I represent an Essex constituency, these are my people. 'I was a Londoner, but Essex people asked me to be their MP, and I want to make sure that I do them proud. And I love this part of the world. 'It's fantastic being here. It's a rural community, and I've been talking to the farmers here. I talked about how my grandfather was a farmer, it's very hard work. 'The people of Essex and East Anglia – they are grafters. 'They work hard, and I want to make sure that we do right by them.' Mrs Badenoch spent Tuesday morning at a farm in Little Walden, where she tried her hand at harvesting wheat using a Claas Lexion combine harvester. She told farmers: 'A lot of farming just feels like constant interference. 'Everything is interfered from the minute you wake up.' Examples of interference included 'chemicals and insecticide, people you're hiring, how much you've got to pay them', plus changes to 'employers' NI (national insurance), then somebody wants to put pylons on, there's compulsory purchase, it's impacting the cost of the land, if you want to add a new farm building, there's planning applications', she said. 'It's just endless constant Government saying, 'You can't do this, you can't do that, you can't move forwards'. 'And the burden in my view has now crossed the threshold.'
BBC News
30 minutes ago
- BBC News
Hull businesses encouraged to apply for grant funding
Businesses are being encouraged to tap into city centre grant funding made available to refurbish vacant properties and create City Council has relaunched the scheme after it said part of the original £7.5m allocated for city regeneration remained authority said 31 businesses have made use of the funding, including ResQ, which received £750,000 towards its £3m refurbishment of the former Hammonds of Hull Paul Drake-Davis, portfolio holder for economic renewal, housing and organisation development, said: "This grant scheme has helped to realise the fantastic potential of our city centre." The £7.5m came from a £19.5m pot of government funding, awarded in November 2021 to "level up" the city now occupies four floors and has welcomed hundreds of new employees as a council said the grant scheme had helped to bring 19 buildings back into use and restored 14 heritage buildings, as well as occupying 18,399sq m (47,653sq km) of previously unused floor space and supporting close to 900 new jobs across the said it had also helped to bring almost £13m of private investment to the applications for the scheme will be assessed on a case-by-case basis and will need to be supported by a credible and deliverable business plan. Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here. Download the BBC News app from the App Store for iPhone and iPad or Google Play for Android devices
Telegraph
30 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Truss to blame for Tory spending crisis, says Badenoch
Kemi Badenoch has hit back at Liz Truss, saying she was to blame for huge overspending by the last Tory government. At the weekend, Ms Truss accused Mrs Badenoch of failing to tell the truth about the last government's mistakes, including 'profligate Covid spending'. In the latest battle in the war of words between the pair, the Tory leader said Ms Truss must be levelling the criticism at herself as she was prime minister for a brief period. She told ITV Anglia: 'As a former prime minister and a former foreign secretary, she carries quite a lot of that blame. 'The party's now under new leadership. I wasn't in charge during those 14 years, she was. That's a criticism that she's probably levelling at herself.' The row started on Sunday when Mrs Badenoch said in an article for The Telegraph that Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were making 'even bigger mistakes' than Ms Truss and had not learnt the lessons of her mini-Budget. A day later, Ms Truss wrote her own article, accusing the Tory leader of repeating 'spurious narratives' to 'divert from the real failures of 14 years of Conservative government in which her supporters are particularly implicated'. These included failing to repeal Labour's Human Rights Act, draconian Covid lockdowns and allowing a huge increase in immigration. She added: 'The economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by [Rishi] Sunak.'Asked about these comments by ITV Anglia, Mrs Badenoch replied: 'Liz Truss reversed her own budget. If it was so great, she would have kept it.' Mrs Badenoch added: 'I'm not having a row with a former Conservative leader. I am saying that Labour has not learnt from her mistakes, from our mistakes. 'That's not a row, that's telling the truth. The important thing we need to understand is what went wrong. 'We need to live within our means. Our country is not living within our means, we're spending too much on debt and debt interest. We're spending more on welfare than we are on defence, that cannot continue.' Previously, the Tory leader had only criticised Ms Truss in private, telling her shadow cabinet in January that it would be helpful if she made fewer interventions. But in her article, she said: 'For all their mocking of Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not learnt the lessons of the mini-budget and are making even bigger mistakes. 'They continue to borrow more and more, unable and unwilling to make the spending cuts needed to balance the books.' Almost three years after the mini-budget of September 2022, Ms Reeves and Sir Keir still regularly resort to blaming the mini-budget for unpopular decisions on tax and spending.
