Over £200,000 a year is wasted as the Lib Dem Council fails to patrol our town centre properly.


Tobias Ellwood MP spent a Friday evening in September with Bournemouth police in the town centre to learn more about some of the challenges they face. About half the officers on duty in Bournemouth are needed in the town centre and Tobias is looking at the possibility of introducing a levy on pubs and clubs to pay for the extra policing required.

While responding to an incident, the police officers commented on how many cars are regularly parked on double yellow lines in the town centre, hindering police cars from travelling down the streets at speed.

Powers to charge parking fines have been removed from the police and it seems Bournemouth's traffic wardens finish for the evening well before the town centre gets busy.

Tobias counted almost 300 cars (up to 10-15 cars per street) in the town centre. Had traffic wardens been working that evening they would have collected over £10,000 for a couple of hours work (probably more as some would not have honoured the reduced amount in the first two weeks.)

Were this repeated over a full weekend over £30,000 could be collected. This is more money than many Bournemouth school budgets (not including staff salaries).

Visitors would soon learn to park in the car parks, (raising another income stream) nevertheless, even if traffic wardens only visited the town centre once a month, the Council would net over £200,000 a year.

The Council's response to Tobias' findings is that to adequately patrol the town centre with traffic wardens would INCREASE council tax. With that sort of logic is it any wonder our council tax has gone up with little to show for it?

More importantly, the police need to be able to do their job, if they are asking cars parked on yellow lines to be removed, the Council should respond.