No action in car park price row (From Ledbury Reporter)
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No action in car park price row
9:00am Monday 22nd October 2012 in News
NO action will be taken against leading town councillor Liz Harvey over her comments in a car park price row.
Coun Harvey, a town and county councillor, released a statement criticising the town council’s role in a decision to raise car parking charges and to make the town’s one free car park a pay car park.
Last week she resisted calls for her resignation from the town council and the town council’s standing commmittee met on Monday to discuss the issue.
But it followed advice from the Herefordshire Association of Local Council’s (HALC) that it should take no action.
Any action against Coun Harvey would have required the agreement of the full town council on November 8.
But no recommendations of that sort were made.
Town clerk Karen Mitchell said the correct procedure in any case would be to contact the monitoring officer of Herefordshire Council’s standards panel with any complaint against a councillor.
Coun Harvey said she now hoped a line would be drawn under the matter. She said: “However, I remain disappointed that Coun Bob Barnes believed that calling for such an agenda item was the appropriate response to my criticism, rather than addressing in a timely manner the material concerns I raised directly with him and others regarding their proposed recommendation on car parking charges.
“I hope the council will now turn its attention to offsetting the impact of the new charges on people living in residential streets adjacent to the town centre and on shoppers and visitors to the town. I also hope councillors have plans to make best use of the free parking to be provided in town on Sundays and are considering what the town’s key Sunday attractions are that the council will be promoting to visitors.”
Ledbury’s mayor Coun Phill Bettington said: “There will be no censuring. We let it go on this occasion.”
The car parking increases have now been ratified by Herefordshire Council.
THE CHANGES
Charges have been introduced in Bridge Street. Charges at Bye Street and Lawnside Road are still 50p for an hour but two hours will rise from 80p to £1, three hours from £1.20 to £1.50, four hours from £1.50 to £2 and longer than four hours from £2 to £2.50.
