CHARGES being introduced at Princetown Car Park in May will be aimed at tourists and people using the town as a base for walking on Dartmoor, the chairman of Dartmoor National Park Authority said this week.

Bill Hitchins said permits would be available to local businesses and residents who used the car park for £10 a year and the charges, starting at 50p and rising to £4 to park all day, would only apply from May to October.

Introducing charges at Haytor and Two Bridges will also be considered at a later date.

The chairman said the authority had little choice but to take this action as it had lost 25% of its budget in the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review and had to look at ways of filling the gap.

'Even though we are not legally forced to provide a ranger service, information centres and an educational service we want to keep these valued services and we do not want to restrict people's access to Dartmoor,' he said.

'We have to make cuts somewhere. Dartmoor is an asset that is used extensively by people for enjoyment and we do not think it too much to ask people to contribute to the maintenance of the car park.'

He added that contrary to some opinions, Dartmoor would not be littered with car parking meters.

'It will be one fairly discreet pay and display system in the car park,' he said. 'We have tried to mitigate the impact on local users and permits will be offered to local people, including dog walkers. There will be no charge in the winter.

'We will see how it goes this year with Princetown before we make a decision on the other maintained car parks at Haytor and Two Bridges.'

Chairman of Princetown Parish Council David Worth said the worry was that on-street parking would increase if charges were introduced in the car park but this would hopefully be addressed with restricted parking in the main street at a future date.

'There has been a lot of concern in the village about parking in Tavistock Road. People come here, park up and go off walking for the day,' he said.

'Restricting the parking to half an hour will stop this and allow people to park up and visit the shop and go again.

'We realise that in the interim these problems of people parking for free on the street might increase with the car parking charges being brought in but hopefully in the long term everybody will be happy with it.'

West Devon Borough Council, which approved the parking order proposal this week, will police the car park.