Parking daleks will drive trade away (From Bucks Free Press)

Parking daleks will drive trade away

5:46pm Thursday 22nd September 2011 in Look Who's Talking By Colin Baker

I had been driving some time when yellow lines, meters and controlled street parking signalled the end of the halcyon days of the free for all ‘park where you can’ car culture. Later generations are perhaps less surprised when the enforcement of parking restrictions is timed to the second.

Last week my theatre tour took me to Worthing, a venue I had not visited for two decades. Sadly it is rare that one revisits a place to find it greatly improved. This was no exception. Vanishing theatre subsidies from cash-deprived councils and audiences feeling the financial pinch have left their mark on the theatre and the town too appeared less loved than I had remembered from previous visits.

I arrived at 5-53pm and saw that street parking charges stopped at 6-00. I had no change so took my bags into the theatre to cadge the 20p I needed off a colleague. Returning at 5-57, I found two meter enforcers attaching the £50 (£25 if paid in 14 days) penalty ticket to my windscreen. The want of 20p had cost me £25.

In the words of the daleks, (and by comparison the plunger wielding aliens seemed a friendlier option at that moment) ‘Resistance is useless.’ I later learned that the streets are full of parking attendants in the minutes before six. Fertile ground obviously. I confess to expressing my sadness that they considered the dying seconds of the charging period as an opportunity for shooting fishes in barrels, but am not sure why I bothered. They’re used to it and presumably go round in twos for sound practical reasons of self-protection.

During the week I learned that the principal beneficiaries of Worthing Council’s decision to use contractors to enforce their parking regulations are the out-of-town superstores and shopping centres that increasing numbers of shoppers frequent and that the town centre shops are as a result struggling.

That I guess would explain the tumbleweed I saw blowing down the high street. If town centre visitors fall foul of such inflexible enforcement attitudes within seconds of arriving in a town, what impression does it leave?

Yes, I know the law is the law and I got what I deserved, but the other side of that coin is that Worthing will reap the eddies of the whirlwind when no one wants to go there.

Somewhere between rigid enforcement and a free-for-all lies a happy medium.