Commuters to lose free parking site

From the archive, first published Thursday 12th Apr 2007.

Commuters are to lose already limited free parking spaces after a supermarket confirmed it will be restricting how long motorists can use in its car park.

A spokesman for Morrisons in Braintree Road, Witham, said it would be limiting its car park to a short-stay, managed car park in the near future.

"The reason we provide the car park at our stores is so customers can have easy access to and from the store," he said.

"With non-customers using our car park, it was becoming increasingly difficult for customers to get in and out."

Morrisons car park is one of the sites that rail commuters park their cars in as it close to the town's railway station.

Braintree Council surveyed Witham's car parks in September and counted 97 vehicles were parked for most of the day at Morrisons, which has 413 spaces.

The council warned then that if the supermarket decided to introduce restrictions, there did not appear to be any other off-road parking near the station that they could use because most places were already full.

Tesco has already introduced a four-hour parking limit at its store in The Grove Centre, Witham, and parking restrictions have forced commuters off some residential roads.

David Bigg, chairman of the Witham and Braintree Rail Users' Association, said more parking was needed in the town to accommodate commuters and shoppers, who have not been using some car parks because of the price hikes introduced last April, which saw all-day parking rise to £5.

n A supermarket's new pay-and-display parking scheme has eased town centre congestion.

A new system was introduced at the end of last year at the Sainsbury's store in Braintree,.

It replaced the previous scheme in which the first 30 minutes' parking was free, with other parking charged at £1 an hour.

It was criticised by the Braintree Town Centre Strategy Group as "draconian", but the group heard the scheme had freed up spaces in the car park and reduced traffic congestion in nearby Coggeshall Road, caused by cars queuing to get into the Blyth's Meadow store's car park.

Mark Jamieson, of Sainsbury's, also told the group that free parking would be introduced on Sundays at the car park.