Shops count cost of loss of Church Square parking

The short-term parking spaces on the church side of the square were replaced by spaces for taxis earlier this year.

Balloonies owner Mark Passmore said the taxi spaces were rarely full and the loss of the ‘pick up and go’ spaces had been detrimental to his business.

‘Balloons can be bulky items and having to take them on to the Albert Pier in a force seven wind is not very good for people,’ he said.

Two unloading bays for the whole area was not good enough, he said.

Anna de Lisle has been running Eleven in the Arcade for seven years.

She agreed that the taxi spaces were not used as intended and added that the area around the Market had also had parking at one time.

‘The politicians need to listen to the people who live, work and trade here,’ she said. ‘There is no consultation.

‘I have people coming in here to collect furniture and my husband ends up having to carry it down to somewhere like The Quay for them.’

Barry Dodd, who formerly ran Soundtrack in Church Square, said many businesses in the area were affected by the removal of the short-term parking in Church Square.

Seven shops in the Arcade were currently empty and he thought the removal of parking was a contributory factor.

Buses sometimes brought children to the Guilles-Alles Library and waited while they were in there, occupying an unloading bay.

Philip Morgan has been running The Paper Box in Church Square for almost 20 years and he also owns The Candy Shop on The Quay.

Every time a parking space was removed it cost him money, he said. Trade was 20% down initially when the short-term parking spaces were taken away and it had been done without consultation, he said.

‘I wrote to them about it at the time and got a holding letter back but I’ve heard nothing from them since,’ he said.

‘It seems as though we’ve got a bunch of idealists in the traffic department. People are simply not going to abandon their cars and still come into Town.’

His business was very much a ‘pop-in’ shop and between October and Easter when there were not the tourists around sales could be on a knife edge.