Let’s park that idea!!

Well I did say last week that I hoped to finally have news about my parking scheme this week, and joy of joys it has come to pass.

After many months of preparation, surveys, persuasion, prevarication, obstruction and finally agreement, Shepton will trial a parking refund scheme for 4 months as from the beginning of December.

The general idea is thus; if you park in one of the town car parks and pay for the privilege, you will get a ticket to put in the vehicle plus a detachable reminder. If you then tear off the reminder and take it into one of the 22 (so far) participating retailers and spend £10 or more, the retailer will refund you either 80p, which is the equivalent of the first hours’ car park charge in Great Ostry or Commercial Road car parks, or 50p which is the charge for the first half hour in Regal Road.

The scheme does not affect the free car parking provision in Great Ostry where there is a free 1 hour parking area, or the other free parking areas behind the Police Station or in Regal Road, these remain as they are.

I have been very heartened by the enthusiasm of the retailers in the High Street, Market Place and Town Street who have embraced the idea whole heartedly, and I am hoping that this scheme will help to boost trade, especially at the Northern end of the Town.

The trial will run until the end of March 2011 when I intend to survey all of the participants to see if they wish it to continue. If successful it is possible that we may look at expanding it to the other towns in the District. If there are any retailers who have not yet committed to the scheme and wish to join in, please let me know and I will ensure that you get the necessary signage. I intend to circulate a list of participating businesses as soon as the scheme gets under way.

Another event that got underway this week after many months of anticipation was of course “Turn Back Time” the BBC time travel shopping experiment filmed in our town centre. I rushed home from a Town Council meeting on Tuesday night to catch the end of it, and then watched again courtesy of the iplayer.

The programme was great, very interesting, thought provoking and in places very funny, seeing 7 fully grown men struggling with a 500lb Gloucester Old Spot pig was priceless, I can’t wait to see the rest of the series.

But on a more serious note, I bumped into 6 people from Bristol who came to the town, had lunch and did a bit of shopping, purely because they saw the programme on Tuesday night, and a local shop keeper told me that she had a bumper day on Tuesday with people attending the Victorian Market. This included a family from Frome who had never been to Shepton before, who said the town was delightful, and that they would be back.

This interest in our town is just what we hoped for when we were working with Wall to Wall to bring the series to Shepton, and I’m very hopeful that this will be just the start of a flood of visitors who will make our high street a viable, thriving and exciting place to do business once again.