A leading voice in Marlow has slammed the council’s lack of action over growing parking problems in town, claiming solutions promised years ago have disappeared in to a ‘black hole’ of information.

The Marlow Society has spoken out after rediscovering a report issued by Buckinghamshire County Council in May 1999 saying if problems were not addressed soon, then residents and visitors would suffer.

Chairman Martin Blunkell said: “Since this paper was written, parking on both sides of the High Street has been allowed and short term parking on Institute Road has supported local shopping.

Not much else has been done in the 16 years since this report. We have been poorly served by the organisations which we pay.”

In 2012, BCC shelved a proposed scheme to introduce a residents-only zone on York and Cambridge Roads, arguing congestion would just be displaced to other areas.

Instead, it insisted a town-wide approach would be more effective, but Marlow Society secretary George Lawrence says a lack of communication with Wycombe District Council is key to why promised solutions have not materialised.

He said: “A lot of people don’t understand who’s responsible; they think Wycombe is responsible but they don’t deal with on street parking.

“It’s Bucks County Council that has the money to deal with this but they’re not expressing an interest. The two need to communicate with each other over the issue.”

Mr Blunkell stressed the “fundamental problem" yet to be tackled is the increasing number and size of cars, claiming wider cars are having to park on grass verges because they don’t fit in to the parking spaces.

He said: “A preliminary study was conducted and published two years ago and everything was wrong. We informed them of their mistakes and nothing was done about it, it just went in to a black hole.”

BCC said a town-wide parking review will go ahead, but it is still in the informal consultation stages, after a delay to incorporate number plate recognition data from WDC.

Dan Elworthy, from Transport for Buckinghamshire, said: “The earliest start date for the formal consultation would be the end of September, which will run for a period of 21 days.

"Following this, all responses will again be collated and analysed, then reported to Cabinet Member for Transportation to obtain his approval. If approved, work can then be ordered and a programme date will be confirmed.”

In the meantime Marlow Town Council has pressed for a consultation to identify dangerous parking spots in town to put down yellow lines.

But businesses and residents in Marlow say they are becoming more frustrated with parking problems, with some claiming it is forcing people to move out of town altogether.