A COUNCILLOR fears that Municpal Buildings chiefs has made a £100,000 loss due to prohibitive parking charges 'chasing people away' from local lots.

Gourock representative Martin McCluskey has called for Inverclyde Council to have another look at its charging regime amid concerns that motorists are not using council car parks enough.

The Labour man’s warning comes after a meeting of the local authority’s policy and resources committee last month, where it was revealed that the council had made £110,000 less than it expected from Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) and parking fees.

Mr McCluskey says that an increase in the number of parked cars on certain streets in his ward has been causing headaches for residents.

He believes that making car parking charges less prohibitive and more convenient to pay would encourage people back into local car parks and help reduce the number of cars parked on streets.

Greenock Telegraph: Martin McCluskey calls for council to re-examine car park charges

He told the Tele: “I’m not advocating for car parking charges to be scrapped, there have been car parking charges in Inverclyde for a long time.

“Last year we increased charges because of the budget gap, but we’re over £100,000 short of where we thought we were in terms of the money brought in by the charges.

“At the same time these car parks are lying half empty while Adelaide Street, Bath Street, Barrhill Road and all the way along Albert Road are all filling up with cars that used to be in this car park.

“We as a council need to be looking at whether the charges we’ve got at the moment are the right ones or whether we need to potentially decrease them to encourage people back into the car parks.

“It’s about trying to find the right level, which is a level that will make people come and park.

Mr McCluskey also feels that more needs to be done to make the public aware of how local car park charges work and that the process of paying the fees could be made more convenient.

He added: “I don’t think there’s just a problem in terms of the fee, the car parks are free for the first two hours.

“What I’m finding is that people on Albert Road, for example, are saying that people are parking in front of their houses and then going into the gym.

“Those people aren’t going to be going into the gym for two hours.

“Part of this is getting the message out to people that parking is free for the first two hours.

“But we also need to make it easier for people to register their cars.

“As far as I understand, in Glasgow and in other west of Scotland local authority areas, you can do it all on an app.

“But here we’re using the machines.

“That’s prohibitive for people who might not realise it’s free for two hours and also people are turning up with no cash and getting caught out.

“We need to make it easy for people to engage with the system and we also need to find the right level of fee that’s going to encourage people to use these car parks.

“It’s about making it as convenient as possible.

“Looking at what came to committee recently, it’s clear that we haven’t found the right level and we need to go back and look at that again I would argue.

“If you walk down Adelaide Street or Bath Street, these roads are filling up and at some points it’s now hard to turn.

“We invested a lot of money in car parks across Inverclyde, we can’t have them lying empty.

“This is an asset for the community, and we need to make sure we get that level of charging right.”

Inverclyde Council has confirmed that its officers had highlighted concern in respect of parking income and are currently in the process of considering options which will be presented to committee at a later date.