North Somerset Council’s ruling Conservative Executive will meet next week to approve plans to introduce on-street pay and display parking charges for much of Weston-super-Mare town centre.

The proposals include:

• Pay and display meters on 28 town centre streets with parking charges of £1.20 an hour
• Charges to be imposed 9am to 6pm, Monday to Satuday
• A parking permit for town centre residents giving an hour’s free on-street parking in the morning and at night charged at £62 per annum
• A ‘Tradesman Permit’ costing £20.80 per day
• A 10p per hour reduction in short stay off-street parking charges

If approved next week, consultation will commence immediately with the intention that the new scheme could be implemented later in the year. The Weston scheme will cost a total of £324,000 to set up and will have annual running costs of £237,000. The council expects the scheme to generate £327,000 in revenue and parking fines in a full year – a surplus of £66,000 which they expect to rise to almost £100,000 a year by year two.

Councillor Mike Bell (Lib Dem, Weston Central), who represents most of the area affected by the proposed on-street charging scheme, said: “Businesses and residents have been pressing for a new, fairer parking scheme for many years. But this isn’t it.

“Town centre residents will be significantly worse off, forced to pay to park near their home or cough up for expensive permits which guarantee nothing. The scheme proposes to do nothing about the inevitable knock on effect of motorists parking in roads just outside the pay and display zone. Most people I speak to who live in streets like Jubilee Road, Stafford Place or around Ellenborough Park think parking is bad now. It’s only going to get worse.

“But worst of all this is a continuation of the unfair policy of hitting Weston. It’s one rule for Weston and another for the rest of the district. Weston residents already have high charges on the seafront – £7 a day – and in our off-street car parks. Now, visitors and residents will be expected to pay on street as well. Meanwhile, the council is happy to have no charges at all in Portishead or Nailsea and almost none in Clevedon.

“Not content with taking £1.5 million in parking income from Weston, North Somerset Council wants more. We need to see the profit taken out of parking and a fair deal for residents and businesses right across the district.”