This isn’t just a parking charge... (From Bournemouth Echo)

This isn’t just a parking charge...

8:20am Thursday 18th March 2010 in

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Is Westbourne shopping being killed off? There haven’t been so many empty or closing shops for many years.

I am told that landlords are still asking huge increases for renewing leases. But there is worse.

Now the parking, which Waitrose made available for 40 years or more, has effectively been closed by Marks and Spencer. Waitrose made a large amount of their income from people who popped in from the car park for their food and who went on to do their other shopping – books, the chemists, clothing, the post office, even a cup of coffee with friends, and who came back within the hour.

Nowadays no one would mind a pound for their hour. After all that seems to be the going rate elsewhere. But £3, recoverable only if you spend money in the shop, is quite out of order. This has caused resentment among shoppers as well as the many small shops in Westbourne, and I have heard several people say they won’t shop at M&S any longer.

There is a bus to the town centre with a big M&S.

DAVID CRITCHLOW, Surrey Road, POOLE