THE debate over parking in Wotton now includes the potential for Gloucestershire County Council to take over the monitoring of the Civic Centre car park.

At last Monday’s Wotton Town Council meeting councillors searched for a solution to ongoing issues with the space outside its offices.

There are frequent incidents in which residents use the car park for longer than the 23-hour limit and users parking in town council spaces.

Councillors are exploring whether GCC, through its contracted service APCOA, could monitor the car park from now on to prevent this.

They also debated the potential to bring in ‘nominal charges’ such as 20p or 50p an hour to park.

“We could become really unpopular with the general public if we made these decisions,” said Wotton Mayor Paul Smith.

Deputy Mayor Roger Claydon was eager to push for a solution after seeing that Dursley Town Council had submitted plans for a long-stay car park.

“At the moment there is not a lot we can do improve parking in the town, we ought to take note of what Dursley have done,” he said.

Cllr Chris Young felt that if a 50p per hour charge was brought in this would act as enough of a deterrent.

An officer from GCC is visiting the town next month to assess the possibilities and advise and suggest a solution.

Bearlands Play Area was also discussed at the meeting.

Councillors voted by eight votes to one abstaining to add the play project to the priority list of options to receive Section 106 funding from Stroud District Council.

Also on the agenda at the last town council meeting was the future of the Post Office.

Due to rent increases at the Post Office in Long Street, it will now be merged with the Co-Op, councillors noted that the option to keep it separate was ‘not viable’.

They did have fears that if both companies sold similar products, such as insurance, the merge could come to a close and the town may be left without a Post Office.

Town councillors also voted to support a survey into a possible cycling route from Wotton to Kingswood and
Charfield.

Although the votes was unanimous at the council meeting on Monday, July 17, councillors were keen to stress that they did not want this plan to be prioritised over any decision to reopen Charfield railway station.

They also warned against promising too much to the public, with the project set to take 10-15 years to complete, if approved.

The cycle path is a further bid by Stroud District Council to ease the pressure on public transport and encourage more
people to ride a bike.