News that Powys County Council’s Cabinet will introduce two hours of free parking in all Powys car parks to help boost Powys’s market town high streets is “long overdue, but nothing like enough to really help them”, according to the Council’s main opposition Welsh Lib Dem-Green Group.

Commenting on the decision taken by the Independent/Conservative Cabinet on Tuesday, groupleader Cllr James Gibson-Watt said: “It is disappointing that the Cabinet initially refused point blank to agree to this proposal. Even now the support will only cover the 6 weeks of the summer holidays and not the 6 months that our Welsh Lib Dem - Green motion to the next County Council meeting is seeking to achieve. This grudging concession will not give time for other initiatives on parking to be fully developed and implemented.”

“Our market towns will need this help for many months to come, so we would have hoped Cabinet would have taken the opportunity to make this free parking period available at least through to Christmas, so our residents as well as tourists can benefit at a time when unemployment rates are predicted to spike and household finances will be most stretched. We will now review the papers underpinning this decision and continue our campaign for longer term support to Powys’s high streets. We look forward to working with councillors across the council to try to make this happen.”