TRADERS experiencing a downturn in business have slammed Wiltshire Council’s report on parking.

Rob Perks of the Chippenham Chamber of Commerce said he vehemently disagreed with its findings.

“I have one piece of evidence that directly contradicts that report,” he said.

“In the Chippenham Area Board, which is a public meeting, we saw a presentation from Dick Tonge and Parvis Khansari [from Wiltshire Council] that showed the number of parking tickets bought in May this year, just after the new charges were brought in, plummeted by an enormous amount. Month on month we had been seeing a decrease, but suddenly the figures just dropped.

“The recession has played some part, but is the council saying it has got ten times worse in the course of a month? The number of tickets bought went downhill in an enormous way the month after the parking charges were introduced.”

Parking figures released at the area board showed the numbers of tickets sold in the town’s car parks has gone down by almost 10,000 in just over a year.

Richard Jaggs, chairman of Devizes Chamber of Commerce, said he was “very disappointed” that the report by Wiltshire Council had no analysis of the impact of car parking charges locally.

He said: “From the report it appears the council is looking at the national economic conditions rather than specific local concerns. It appears they have come up with a report that suits their requirements to back up the decision they have already made without going to the effort of doing proper research.

“For them to say it is what a town has to offer that will affect economic health, they clearly haven’t done the research to ascertain that. I think Devizes has a great retail offer.

“The chamber has offered its services to get research done so the council has a good understanding of the impact of the car parking charges in Devizes but they haven’t replied. The increased car parking charges and reduction in free parking in the Market Place to half an hour continues to be damaging.”