HOLIDAY DESTINATION
FEATURE
seem complex – but they appear to work. The town council owns several small, free car parks that provide a total of a few hundred spaces. Waveney District Council, in conjunction with facilities management company Waveney Norse, is responsible for the paid- for car parks (around 800 spaces in total), while Suffolk County Council is responsible for enforcing on-street parking regulations (although, by all accounts, a light touch is all that is needed – Southwold’s visitors appear to be a genteel and well-behaved bunch, on the whole). Sue Keeble, operations manager for community services at Waveney DC, tells Parking News that she sees reasonably priced parking provision not as a cash cow, but rather as something that will benefi t Southwold in the long term. She says: ‘Certainly there are plenty of places around the country where councils try to cash in on visitors, but that has never been the case here. We have always found that an increase in prices just means fewer people using our car parks, so we have always aimed to keep prices down.’ Indeed, £4.50 for a full day parking, given the demand, is very reasonable compared with other resorts in the region. She continues: ‘We have to have a bit of
fl exibility according to the change in demand through the year – we change the number of inspectors according to the season, and they certainly have their work cut out in the summer, when they also tend to serve as walking, talking tourist information centres!’ One advantage of having a distinct off- season is that the car parks can be used for other things – the pier car park is used to store hundreds of Southwold’s famous beach huts during the winter, safe from the frequent high tides that plague this part of the coast.
Be prepared
Southwold’s mayor Michael Ladd says one of the biggest challenges for parking managers is that visitor numbers can vary hugely on a day-to-day basis. ‘Of course, many of our visitors plan their stay here many months in advance – and they tend to park wherever they are staying – but we also have a great number of day-trippers. Of course, many of them will base their decision whether to visit on the weather on a particular day, so it’s rare that
www.britishparking.co.uk
we know far in advance how busy the town is going to be.’
Cllr Ladd, who has lived in Southwold all his life, says the town has grown in popularity over the decades – and continues to attract more and more drivers with each passing year. But he says fl exibility and collaboration between the different parking authorities are essential to provide a good service to visitors. He says: ‘Just last weekend we celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee with a huge street party in the middle of town. We actually opened up part of Southwold Common for parking, which we only do on three days a year, maximum, and this gave us an extra 300 spaces for the day. In addition, the district council agreed to free use of its car parks over the holiday weekend. ‘We need to be fl exible and to provide as good a service as we can, at as reasonable a price as we can manage. Of course, we still hear stories of people driving around the town for an hour, desperate to avoid paying a couple of pounds to park in a safe, convenient place – personally I don’t really understand that, but the customer is always right.’
Indeed, visitors seem happy with the
service on offer. Sarah Higgins, a visitor from Cambridge, told Parking News she fi nds the fees extremely reasonable in comparison to her home city: ‘Considering how popular Southwold is, I think they do a very good job with their car parks. It’s always possible to fi nd somewhere, even on the busiest days, and the prices are very reasonable.’
PART-TIME PARK CREATES SPACE
One way Southwold is dealing with its summer infl ux is with the creation of a part-time car park, to be used just 28 days a year.
Mayor Michael Ladd says the facility will be used – quite literally – on high days and holidays, relieving pressure on other facilities and raising money for charity. He says: ‘By only using the car park for 28 days a year, we are able to avoid such issues as planning permission, environmental health issues, and fl ood assessments and the like. But we believe it will make a great difference.’ Southwold Millennium Foundation,
which is behind the facility, has used cash raised from public tours of the town’s famous lighthouse to fund the car park; the freehold of the land was gifted to the charity by Southwold Town Council. Volunteers will look after the site, which will cater for about 500 cars. Drivers will pay £3 to £5 for a full day, which will go straight back to the Southwold Millennium Foundation.
Cllr Ladd adds: ‘It is not a permanent solution – and we are certainly going to have to fi nd longer-term improvements, but it will certainly ease the pressure on our busiest days.’
AUGUST 2012 31
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52