Park's £2.50 parking charge plan 'diabolical'

Plans to introduce parking charges at a park have been called "diabolical", by a former town mayor.

The proposed £2.50 all-day charge would help fund the transformation of Ashenbury Park, Woodley, to become a country park, says Andy Glencross, head of environmental services at the Liberal Democrat-led Wokingham Borough Council.

He added the park was not at the standard of the borough's other country parks but the "small charge" would help fund a £200,000 investment in footpaths, plus other improvements.

Conservative Woodley Town Councillor David Bragg challenged the plan. "To charge £2.50 for people to go and have a leisurely walk around the park taking their dog for a walk is diabolical."

Bragg said: "When you get the country club, a restaurant, cafe, toilet blocks, maybe then it's something else, where the family can go for the whole day.

He said there was nothing there but the "pathway built to attract people in".

The car park, off Denmark Avenue, is currently free and has enough space for roughly 45 cars.

The park is a popular spot for dog walkers and its car park is used by parents dropping off and picking up their children who attend Waingels secondary school.

During the briefing to Woodley councillors, Glencross said they were not introducing full-level country park charges because the site did not "have a cafe, toilet block or any of those kinds of facilities".

He added there would be a 15-minute "grace period" for drop-offs and pick-ups.

He explained the park would be managed by Wokingham Countryside team, ahead of more improvements aimed at turning it into a fully fledged country park in the future.

He added: "I appreciate not everyone likes car parking charges, but we're not just taking the income and benefiting from that, we're actually providing quite a lot of investment to a local facility."

During the briefing, at Woodley Town Council's planning and community committee on 21 July, Liberal Democrat councillor Mark Ashwell, the borough's executive member for leisure and countryside, added: "Without the car parking charges coming in to actually pay for these improvements [the footpaths] that we put in up front, we wouldn't have been able to do it."

The footpaths, completed recently, link the park to Aldermoors Local Nature Reserve, Waingels Road and Beggars Hill Road, as well as creating a one-mile circular route around the park.

Wokingham Borough Council is due to publish a traffic regulation order (TRO) on 6 August, with a public consultation giving residents the opportunity to have their say on the proposed charges.