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Parking Policy

I thank the hon. Gentlemen for his very pertinent question. My personal view is that anyone, whether it be a supermarket, a local council or some other public body, who provides a car parking facility for, say, more than 20 members of the public ought to be able to contribute to—indeed, ought to be required to take part in—a local parking plan, so that everything can be co-ordinated. The Government response to paragraph 242 of the Select Committee report, which I read out earlier, is:"““The Department’s guidance about second local transport plans encourages just this, as does the draft statutory guidance.””" Again, however, the reality is different. I can speak from my own experience in Northamptonshire. The Northamptonshire local transport plan simply does not address the practical difficulties of parking in and around a town centre such as Kettering. I think, for example, that Tesco’s supermarket, on the outside of the town, should be obliged to talk to the local authority and the local authority ought to be obliged to talk to representatives of the supermarket about the co-ordination of their car parks with the other car parks in the town. There needs to be some kind of partnership approach to achieve what paragraph 242 in the excellent Select Committee report sets out. Before I finish speaking, I want to praise one of the local newspapers in Kettering—the Evening Telegraph —which has run a very effective campaign to prevent inconsiderate parking outside schools at peak time. As my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) said, there are real issues about pedestrian safety around parked cars, and there has been a growing problem in Kettering. Understandably, parents are reluctant in many cases to allow their children to walk to school, so they drive them there, and of course they all drive at the same time, to get there just before the school opens. There has been a lot of inconsiderate parking. However, thanks to the publicity that the Evening Telegraph has given to the issue, I am pleased to say that in many cases there is now no longer a problem outside local schools, because parents are thinking, ““Oh, we should set off five minutes earlier; I should park just around the corner.”” The parking has been much more considerate. I thank you, Mr. Benton, for the time that you have given me today. I commend the Select Committee on its report. In particular, I think that paragraph 242 sums it all up rather well.