New country parks and blue badge parking charges in force from today

New parking charges for blue badge holders and in three of Wrexham’s country parks are now in place.

From today those visiting Alyn Waters – Llay and Gwersyllt sides – Ty Mawr Country Park and Nant Mill will have to pay £1 as part of new charges introduced by Wrexham Council. Blue badge holders can continue to park for free in country parks.

However in the town centre blue badge holders will now have to pay to use all council-operated car parks (details of which can be found here on the council’s website).

There will also be an additional hour added to the usual tariff, for example, those paying for a three-hour stay would be able to park for four hours.

New pay and display machines in the three country parks and additional machines near disabled parking spaces in the town centre were also installed, and re-installed in the library car park last week as picture above and below.

It is estimated that introducing parking charges for blue badge holders could generate £25k and fees in country parks could generate and additional £47k.

Last Friday a several page statutory notice was published in the daily edition of The Leader to communicate the changes to you, which based off previous pricing will have likely cost a four figure sum itself.

After a previous three page parking statutory notice that was published in the ‘press’, as referenced by Cllr David A Bithell in a public meeting, we asked what other publications were used for such notices. We also asked regarding the cost of such adverts, and if Wrexham Council have requested or been provided with current circulation figures.

Wrexham Council did not reply.

Statutory notice answers are also tricky to obtain up at council merger candidate Flintshire, where a section of a recent FOI over costs of statutory notices was declined over commercial sensitivity reasons.

It does not require an FOI to see Flintshire Council paying for blank space with public money, with this small example from a ten page notice (delivered through our door in Wrexham) last week:

@DeesideDotCom hope there are no budget cuts up @FlintshireCC as they are paying for literally nothing again! pic.twitter.com/ykgZwnnwR5

— Wrexham.com (@wrexham) May 18, 2018

This is something we have covered before – with Welsh Government also being keen to fork out for literally nothing in the name of public communication.