Morrisons wants to introduce parking charges to stop non-customers abusing the store’s car park.
The supermarket in Mill Street is hoping that pay-and-display will prevent town centre shoppers using their car park as a freebie while they shop in the town centre or go to work.
Currently customers are allowed to park for two hours and risk being landed with an £80 fine if they stay any longer.
However, the store has not implemented a vehicle monitoring system to enforce this, and many people have questioned the legality of notices from private company Parking Eye.
The supermarket has now submitted an application to Stafford Borough Council for four pay-and-display machines and an automated registration plate recognition camera.
Under the new scheme, vehicles will be monitored by an automated camera and customers will be able to park at the store for free for two hours, after which they will need to pay. The charges have not yet been revealed.
A spokesman for Morrisons said: “The parking has been progressively abused by non-customers, and this has reached an unacceptable level, affecting the operation of the store.”
Stafford Borough Council is expected to come to a decision within five weeks.
The planning application is on the borough council’s planning application website, where you can also comment on the planning application.
6 comments
Jamie Summerfield
Hi D – thanks for your comments. Although Morrisons was given planning permission to install the pay-and-display machines in August, they’ve decided not to go ahead with the scheme. Although as they now have the permission, they could always change their minds and install them at a later date I suppose. I’ll get a new post on the site about this – thanks for the reminder!!
D Roberts
Bit late on this…
Parking Eye cannot fine anyone. Ever. They can request compensation but essentially the have no legal power at all to enforce a “fine”. Using the word is misinformation.
Now the charging for the car park is going to be interesting. Some PPCs often say first 30mins free but £2 for an hour (for example) but you still have to pay £2 so it isn’t free.
Wonder what they’ll choose? However this still isn’t solving the problem so I agree wholeheartidly with Mr T. Seems to be the best way forward.
I was at Morrisons a few weeks back and didn’t notice any machines – any notice on when this may happen?
Mr T
This will have a detrimental effect on traders in the High Street. At present shoppers can park for up to two hours free, use the supermarket and then go and visit shops in town. I was hearing a discussion on the wireless about the demise of the High Street, and the head of the British Retail Consortium said that one way to halt the decline is for town centre supermarkets to allow free access to their carparks for a limited period. Obviously the managemwnt of Morrisons UK was not listening to the programme. Morrisons car-park does get abused by people who leave their vehicles for long periods of time so a maximum stay/minimum spend scheme would be the best way forward.
Mr P
Another poor business decision from a town centre retail outlet. For the first time in awhile Morrisons face stiff competition from the new Aldi store that offers free parking for all it’s customers. Now you would think Morrisons would be offering all kinds of incentives to get people back to their store and spending their hard earned cash there. But no what do they do? they introduce a parking fee!
Bad move Morrisons, I’ll be parking for free on Aldi!
Mr P
The Post Office not being able to survive in Stone just about sums up the decline of the High Street. Ok the new owners made the mistake of spending large sums of money fitting the place out to sell food etc. when we have Morrisons and the Co op as competition was probably not one of their better ideas. But to go out of business when it’s the only Post Office for miles is beyond belief!
For all local business’s at the moment it is a complete nightmare. My wife today travelled to Tittensor to post one £1.59 parcel to Ireland and because of the resurfacing work outside the Winghouse she was forced on to Blurton. The amount of petrol and time this took it made the transaction not economically viable. This Post Office needs to open and fast!
So what is to become of the existing Post Office?
Steve
Fair enough but I wish their priority was pushing for something to be done about the crazy getting off the car park on to the new road layout.