TRADERS from Tavistock turned out in force this week to slam car parking charges in the town which have rocketed to among the highest in the county.

The recent increase in car parking fees, as much as 33% in one category, has had an effect on the number of people coming through the doors of town centre stores, say shopkeepers.

They put their case to West Devon Borough Council at a chamber of commerce meeting on Monday.

But the authority claims the steep hike in charges was unavoidable to help meet an £800,000 black hole in its budget this year.

The council?s director of community and services David Inman faced traders after petitions with hundreds of signatures were handed in from supermarket Somerfield, which refunds its customers? parking charges, and traders in Brook Street.

New parking charges, which came into effect at the beginning of April and saw an increase from 60p to 80p for a one-hour stay, are expected to add to congestion on the street as shoppers and workers in the town seek free parking.

Brook Street trader John Follett said Tavistock had been dogged by traffic problems ? persistent roadworks, shoppers parking in loading bays and congested streets ? and the new charges were aggravating the situation.

He said: ?The yellow lines are going further and further out of town because people keep parking on the road to avoid the high charges.?

Mr Follett accused the borough council of being negative to suggestions to ease the problems: ?If we have no town centre we have no heart ? a few towns around here are absolutely barren except for the service industry and the launderette.

?We had a really good town here once, but it is getting worse and we would like to see the borough working to do something for us.?

Clive Patterson from JAG said: ?Over the last couple of months the number of footfall (customers through the door) in the town has gone down, and that is a fact.?

But figures suggested the increases had not affected the number of cars using the car parks and the revenue had gone up on last year, said Mr Inman.

The two and three-hour charges had stayed fairly close in price to encourage people to stay in town longer.

Mr Inman apologised for the rise in car parking but the situation with the budget this year had been ?horrific?, he said.

?Clearly, the charges are higher than we would wish them to be but it was completely unavoidable.

?It was one of the measures we looked at to increase our revenue in order to meet an £800,000 black hole in the budget.

?We also had to create redundancies and raise the rates just under 10%, which left us teetering on the edge of being capped by the Government.?

He said the cost in delivering services, particularly recycling, had put pressure on the council?s finances: ?We are set targets by the Government which we have to meet or we are penalised.?

It was agreed that more use should be made of the Riverside Car Park, where people could park all day for £1.50 ? season tickets were also £90 cheaper than for town centre car parks.

Mr Inman said signage would be going up soon to advertise the car park, but security, lighting and a foot-linkage to the Bedford Car Park would all increase its usage.

Shopkeepers liked the idea of having Riverside, which holds about 90 cars, as a traders? car park and this will be pursued by the council.

Paying on exit was not favoured by Mr Inman because he said it was an expensive option to operate and had failed to work in most small towns except Newton Abbot which had a much larger shopping area. He also said a park and ride system was unlikely to work in Tavistock.

It was suggested that bus services could link with Safeway and transport people into town, so preventing cars gridlocking the town centre.

Mr Inman said the council was willing to work with traders but officers would not always agree with what they had to say because some ideas would just not work, for example, culverting the river near ATS and building a car park there, for environmental reasons.