Highland Council's new car-parking policy "It's going to be a hard sell to our local communities"

We've quoted Cllr Peter Sagers in the headline above. More details, in a moment, on where to find what Nairn Councillors had to say at a Highland Council committee meeting yesterday.

Here's what the Press and Journal had to say in advance of the meeting:

" A new policy is being proposed to resolve the bitterly-contested issue of car parking charges.

Decisions about parking charges in Highland Council’s area would be decided by local communities, who will choose where the fees will be implemented and how much to charge.

They would also be able to choose how much of the revenue raised would stay locally and even have the right to refuse to implement charges if they choose.

The council’s area committees would assume responsibility for the decisions made and for implementing them." More here. 

After fast-forwarding the web-cast to see what Nairn Councillors had to say and dipping in and out of other parts of an almost 3 hour long video, this observer (making an unscientific guess) would perhaps imagine that at some time in the not too distant future we might see parking charges in some areas of the town but not the town centre with proceeds being split between the Council and the local community. 

You can try to a certain extent to read the runes from what people have to say but, over and above that, surely it would be total madness to implement car parking charges in the town centre when Balmakeith is about to expand into almost an alternative High Street with free parking?

So here's the webcast readers. Liz speaks at 37.12 into the vid and also at 2.28.55 and Cllr Peter Saggers at 1.24.16. Maybe others from Nairn spoke but didn't see them as I moved forward looking to see who was making contributions. Warning - there is a lot of Council-speak in the webcast and sometimes life can be too short to listen to too much of that!