Free parking across Gloucestershire car parks is working well, say council chiefs as they move to roll out the scheme to another site.

Forest of Dean District Council chiefs abolished the first hour charge for their car parks last year.

They introduced the free parking in conjunction with increases to charges for those staying longer than one hour – and civic chiefs say has proven a success so far.

The parking regime was raised at tonight’s (Thursday, May 15) cabinet meeting where councillors voted to bring Pyart Court car park under the same regime.

Currently there is a 20p charge for an hour and 40p for two hours – the charging is 24 hours and seven days a week.

And blue badge holders charged at the standard rate.

However, the rest of the council’s car parks operate a charging regime from 8am to 6pm, six days a week with free parking on Sundays.

Blue badge holders can park for free and all users can park for free for the first hour. It’s £1 for two hours, £2 for three hours, £3 for four hours and £4 for more than four hours.

Projects and property cabinet member Sid Phelps (G, Lydbrook), who presented the report, told the meeting the council bought Pyart Court business units in Coleford.

It included a parking area which has a different regime than their nearby car park.

He said the purpose of the report is to add the car park so that the district council’s offstreet parking regime is the same.

“The proposal will abolish the current charge for blue badge holders who park to bring it inline with other Forest of Dean District Council car parks.

“The parking order will unify charges across all of our car parks in the district.”

He asked cabinet to back the proposals to add Pyarts Court Car Park to the current parking order and to agree a budget of around £5,850 for equipment and signs for the site.

Cabinet approved this and agreed to delegate officers to consider feedback and decide whether to go-ahead and make the variation order.

Climate Emergency cabinet member Chris McFarling (G, St Briavels) said it is good they are bringing Pyart Court into their own jurisdiction.

“We seem to be doing well with the new charging facilities which we introduced,” he said.

“After much discussion and debate, they seem to be working well. We are managing to get the income we need to offset the expenditure in our car parks.

“They are not a drain on council taxpayers. I’m glad we’ve brought Pyart Court into that regime as well.”