Dales council says its car parks won't be monitored like 'notorious' Derby site
A Derbyshire council has vowed that its car parks will not become like a “notorious” site in Derby, fining people for overstaying by slim margins. In a Derbyshire Dales District Council last night (January 27) councillors adopted a slew of new car park changes including 30 minutes of free parking.
Vikki Winfield, neighbourhoods manager, said users would get a separate ticket entitling them to 30 minutes free, as opposed to getting the first 30 minutes of their paid-for stay without a charge. She confirmed there would be a 10-minute grace period for people overstaying their 30-minute slot.
However, camera monitoring of the 30-minute sessions was ruled out, with Cllr Martin Burfoot, chairing the meeting, saying “we don’t want to be like that notorious car park in Derby”. This refers to the Copeland Street car park in Derby, operated by Excel Parking, which carries a five-minute payment rule which fines drivers who take more than five minutes to park up and pay for parking, with some facing fines stretching into the hundreds of pounds.
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Ms Winfield said its car parks would not be staffed by attendants throughout the day but would be occasionally monitored, with checks carried out 30 minutes apart to ascertain motorists who had overstayed the free period. Meanwhile, councillors also discussed plans for a season parking charge for Matlock Bath, with higher prices during the peak season (April to October) and lower charges for the quieter off-season.
Ms Winfield said the village’s car parks were typically over capacity in the summer months. She said: “Anyone who is a resident locally would never dream of going to Matlock (Bath) on a busy sunny day because they know it is going to be quite challenging to get parked there.”
Councillors also debated plans to reopen and reestablish three public toilets, two of which were closed seven years ago due to budget cuts. The council will spend £8,000 reopening the Artist’s Corner toilet block on the A6 between Matlock and Matlock Bath; £12,500 to build a new toilet at Ashbourne Recreation Ground; give £2,000 to the allow public use of toilets at the Whitworth Centre in Station Road, Darley Dale; and pay £31,518 to hire a full-time public conveniences attendant.
Toilet blocks in all three areas were closed in May 2018 along with nine others in order to save £213,000 a year. A temporary toilet block was installed at the Artist’s Corner site in September 2023 at a cost of £5,000 “due to complaints of members of the public using the surrounding hedgerow as a toilet”.
This temporary toilet was put into storage in November 2023 and reinstalled from March to November 2024, with complaints spiking again during September and October last year during the Matlock Bath Illuminations event, the council said. Cllr Sue Bull questioned whether the Ashbourne site could be returned to its previous use rather than rebuild another facility, to which she was told by officials that the existing storage space now used by the council’s Clean and Green team, so it needed to be retained.
Cllr Peter Dobbs said: “This is very much a first step. It was faced with the significant reduction in public toilet provision post 2017/2018 and trying to bring it back. Obviously in some cases we couldn’t, they’ve been demolished, and in some cases they have stood and could have a future and in some cases that baton has been taken on by the local community and well done them.”
Cllr Andy Nash said facilities in Bradwell, operated by the parish council since 2018 after it took on the facility from the district council, were a “necessity”. He said: “We don’t want more bottles of pee on the side of the road because people have got nowhere to go. Parish councils will struggle on, they will keep them going.”
Cllr Nash asked that the council consider giving money to parish councils operating public toilets to continue their operation, with officials to consider where this may be required, including assessing footfall at each location. Six public toilets in the Dales are operated by parish councils following the district council decision to close them seven years ago and two further public toilet blocks had already been operated by parish authorities before that decision.
Cllr Jo Linthwaite said: “Small parish councils are bearing the burden of what was previously carried by this council.” Cllr Sue Hobson, Conservative opposition leader, said: “I can’t understand why public toilets are not a statutory provision.
“When the toilets were closed before nobody wanted to close the toilets but we were told there is no money for toilets. Nobody wants to live in a village where there aren’t toilets.”
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