Cllr Jon Hubbard

Traders forced to reconsider “free” parking scheme after council changes meters

Published on Sunday 3rd July 2011 by Jon Hubbard

New parking meters installed by Wiltshire Council have left local traders seeing red as a result of the removal of receipts from tickets issued.

Following the decision by the Conservative council to scrap the one hour free parking in Melksham local retailers set up their own scheme where they would refund the first hour’s parking for customers.

Shop owner Shaun Bailey of Games Galore explained to local councillor Jon Hubbard that the machines no longer produce a receipt for shoppers to give to the retailer to show that they had paid for their parking.

Cllr Hubbard is writing to the council to ask that the programming in the machines is changed to issue receipts in future.

Cllr Hubbard is also asking why the new machines were needed as they don’t appear to do anything new from the old machines which did issue both receipts and change.