Car parking charges: Other towns in North Kirklees ‘30 years behind’ Dewsbury, says Chamber of Trade

The council’s decision to roll out the controversial fees - which start after two hours of free parking - at 11 car parks in Cleckheaton, Batley, Birstall and Mirfield came into force on January 1.

But charges have been in place in Dewsbury town centre for “over 30 years”.

Paul Ellis, the chamber’s president, told the Reporter Series:

“Dewsbury has paid its fair share over the years, and the other towns around, your Cleckheatons and your Batleys, are 30 years behind us.

“Of course they are going to make a big issue, and I am not surprised they do, but we’ve had it for 30-odd years.

“We’ve been paying for over 30 years. And people who have parked in Dewsbury over that time have paid out millions of pounds.

“We saw the head of highways at Civic Centre 3 in Huddersfield for a couple of hours putting across our point of view saying Dewsbury could not stand any more parking charges because we’ve been paying them for over 30 years and the millions they have paid out.

“We said to them that they had to start levelling up. We gave him six pages of our ideas of what we can do in North Kirklees. It took the burden off Dewsbury, it was getting out of hand.”

Dewsbury has seen an increase of their own, with fees rising from 5p to 50p per hour.

“It doesn’t surprise me that they have levelled up with that,” Paul said. “We asked them to level it up throughout North Kirklees so the Chamber of Trade are certainly not going to make an issue that it has gone up from the 5p, even though enough is enough with parking charges for town.

“We don’t welcome any more parking charges in Dewsbury and we don’t want charges to go up but I can only think that Kirklees, over the years, must have forgotten about it (the 5p charge).

“We are not going to make an issue out of that.”