The All-New-Yet-Unimproved Somerset Cuonty Council are proposing to increase car parking charges in Smalltown and Dullbridge by ten percent this year, as part of a cunning plan to fleece yet more money from residents, as well as knocking the final nail into the coffin for traders in the towns.
The council estimates that the increase will generate an additional £940,000 and says the increase is necessary because stuff costs more thanks to the high rate of inflation or some such flimsy excuse.
Manager of Making People Pay More To Park, Noel Peakin, confirmed the increase saying “Parking charges and fees are to be increased to reflect recent inflationary pressures and to maintain the encouragement to alternative types of transport to town centres, such as buses, cycling and car sharing.
The increased charges and fees will enable the council to continue to meet its overall transport objectives without increasing an additional demand on the general expenditure fund.”
SomersetClive put his statement though an Artificial Intelligence translator and can confirm that what he meant was “We are going to put the prices up because we can. It’s an easy way to get money and we need lots of money, because the cost savings promised by abolishing the District Councils and combining them into the new All-New-Yet-Unimproved Somerset Cuonty Council have failed to materialise.
In addition, as part of the BeFuddled Party’s Climate Rescue Action Plan (CRAP), we know z., 3wwant to do away with all cars and take the country back to the dark ages.”
Car parks in Smalltown consistently topped the previous administration Sadgebore District Council’s list of Top Paying Car Parks, with three of the top five carparks in the region being in Smalltown. The Jetty Street car park income is known as a ‘Nice Little Earner’ as income is double that of its nearest rival in Fridgpond.
Whilst ANYUSCC is proposing a ten percent increase, in practise this will be higher, as the Council plans to round the figures up, so car owners who use Smalltown car parks can look forward to the cost of an hour’s parking rising from .80 pence to .90 pence, with two hours going from £1.60 to £1.80 and all day from £5.10 to £5.70 – which means the increases are closer to 12 percent than 10.
When we put this to Mr Peakin he said “When we talk about an increase in financial figures we always round the number down so that it doesn’t sound very much, but in order to maximise the actual income amount we round the figures up. It’s not rocket science.”
Businesses in Smalltown and Dullbridge have reacted with horror to the news with founder and leader of the Smalltown Shops (SS) group, Lady Brassy of Easton-under-Water, saying” This is terrible, terrible, terrible news. I go all out to promote my lovely, lovely, lovely little shop on social media and then this happens. Do ANYUSCC ever think of the awful awful, awful effect this will have on traders?
If my fellow SS stalwart Mistress Bones’ close friend and employer Squire Teflon still had a chair at ANYUSCC you can guarantee that he would never, never, never have allowed this. Increase parking charges elsewhere, but not, not, not in Smalltown.”
Chair of the Chamber of Business Benefiting the Local Economy in Dullbridge (COBBLED), and ANYUSCC Councillor Jock McCads said” “I think it’s a great idea. This is exactly what Dullbridge needs.”
However, traders in Dullbridge were less impressed telling SomersetClive “Making any sort of profit from a shop in Dullbridge is difficult enough already. Why would ANYUSCC think people would want to pay to park to use our shops when they can park for free at Asdals?”
ANYUSCC said that any surplus generated from the increase will be reinvested directly into employing more Civil Enforcement Officers (CEO) to fine anyone not paying to park, rather than doing something sensible such as subsidising and improving local bus services.