Today is the last day you can park for free in the Horns Lane and The Mount car parks, it will start charging again on the 1st April.
The decision was announced by Town Mayor and Chairman, Councillor Andy Ball, he said this:
“As your Town Mayor and Chairman, it is my duty to inform you, our town's residents, that as of the 31st March 2022 our free weekend parking will cease.
I am extremely sorry and disappointed that the Town Council has had to make this decision. In the past 2 years, we have been able to offer this free service following a grant from Buckinghamshire Council to fund this initiative. Unfortunately, this has not been the case this year.
Buckinghamshire Council owns and maintains the two car parks situated at Horns Lane and the Mount. This financial year Buckinghamshire Council wanted approximately £49,000 to carry on with this free weekend parking.
In order to fund this, we would have had to have charged our taxpayers an extra £12.98 per year* (based on an average band D property).
At a meeting in January, where we agreed on budgets for the upcoming financial year, our twelve Councillors and I voted unanimously to cease free parking as we felt it was not a viable cost in the current economic climate.
We agreed on a 3.8% increase in our precept, the free parking would have meant a 16.3% increase which no councillor agreed with.
Please remember from the 1st April 2022 to purchase a ticket to park in car parks at the weekend, as well as in the week, the last thing I would want to see is our motorists receiving a parking fine."