Like many local residents we’ve been annoyed by the impact of the decision of Marston’s (the Brewing Company) who own the Hilton Brook to introduce an automated system to charge anyone using its car park 24x7, unless they register in the pub as a customer.
On the face of it that sounds perfectly reasonable, with both Aldi and the shops outside Tesco are also advertising charges, using cameras. The problem is that whilst both these other car parks allow a “grace period” that means that short stay users of their car parks are not penalised, that isn’t true for the Hilton Brook pub. They will even fine people using the Car Park when the pub us closed.
The impact can be regularly seen as in the picture.
Add to this the chaos at the top of Welland Road outside the Doctor’s surgery caused by Pizza delivery cars blocking the turning head there and all in all this decision doesn’t appear to be very community friendly.
Now Marston’s are a commercial company and quite within their rights to put charges on their own car park, however we hope they have some community spirit and will reconsider their charging regime and allow a period of free parking when the shopping spaces are overflowing - particularly when the pub is not open.
Hilton Brook Car Parking Petition
Since Marston's introduced ANPR cameras on the Hilton Brook Car Park, the local community has suffered unintended consequences. There is often a near empty Hilton Brook Car Park when the main shops car park is overflowing, Pizza delivery cars are now clogging up the road outside the Doctor's. Whilst Aldi and the main shops also now have parking camera's, they both allow short stay residents a period of grace before enacting fines. The Hilton Brook cameras operate 24x7 including when the Pub is closed, causing unnecessary inconvenience for the local community. We the undersigned wish Marston's to reconsider both it's 24x7 operation of parking restrictions and ask them to reallow a short period of free parking for residents when the main shops car park is overfull.