00:00Empty streets and abandoned shops. It's no secret in Medway that high streets
00:05are struggling to stay afloat but two residents have banded together with what
00:10they feel is the solution. A 12-month trial of one hour of free parking in one
00:17car park in each of the five towns. On a monthly basis I said that I do
00:22volunteer a lot of my time and I can spend up to £60 a month just on
00:27volunteering and coming to towns to park and that that you know for a small
00:33family you know one day's parking could feed a family. Neil and Lauren have
00:39grown frustrated with rising tariffs in council-owned car parks and have launched
00:43a petition to try and get Medway Council to listen. In February Medway Council raised
00:48parking tariffs across the board with an hour's parking going up from £2.40 to
00:54£2.90. One exception they did make was cutting half an hour's parking down to
00:59just a pound. But despite persistent financial shortfall Neil and Lauren think
01:04the council could have gone further. It doesn't matter if it's a night out or a
01:08restaurant or you just pop into the shops to grab some products whatever
01:13you're doing the first thing you're going to be met with is a £3.30 charge
01:16and when you talk about retail and the challenges retail faces in terms of
01:19online retailers lots of companies like Amazon but you know now offer free
01:23delivery so if I can get the same products on Amazon for the same price but
01:27the first thing I do if I want to go get it myself is pay £3.30 to park
01:30people are not going to do that. Between rising essential costs and persistent
01:34shortfall Medway Council however is already squeezed for cash. I suspect the
01:39financial burden of this particular request will be substantial and that's
01:44at a time when we are finding it challenging because of the pressures like
01:48adult social care on our budget but of course I welcome any petition from
01:51anybody from across Medway. In Medway Council's budget for this financial year he
01:56anticipated it would earn 10.7 million from parking across all five towns which
02:02is an increase of 2.2 million pounds following hikes that came into play this
02:07May. Medway Council estimated that Neil and Lauren's petition would cost around
02:121.6 million pounds though Neil who's the chair of Reform UK's Chatham and
02:17Aylesford branch feels the cost will be worth the benefits felt in the high
02:22streets. It's true that the more you put parking up the more the less people will
02:25park so the more you put the costs up the less people are parked so ultimately in
02:28the long run that that income generation is going to disappear because when you
02:31make this town so unattractive through years of increasing parking that nobody
02:34uses it anyway you've lost that income. The petition is open until the end of
02:38November and with just over a hundred signatures collected so far even if it
02:43isn't debated in the council chamber Neil and Lauren might have to just keep
02:48driving for change Megan Shaw in Medway
