FRUSTRATED business owners and residents made an impassioned plea to stop planned parking charges in their tracks at a meeting of the parish council last Tuesday.

The two free hours in the Queen’s Road car park in Sunninghill and the A30 London Road car park in Sunningdale will be scrapped from April 4 to the disbelief of infuriated villagers.

The new parking tariff will mean that drivers will have to pay £1.50 to park for two hours or 50p with a Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead advantage card, with other charges remaining the same.

Many Sunninghill residents use the car park to pop in to buy a pint of milk, bottle of wine, collect framed pictures, their dry cleaning, prescriptions from the chemist, or to pick their children up from nearby St Michael’s CofE Primary School.

The A30 London Road car park in Sunningdale provides a vital link for commuters and to the High Street.

Speaking at Sunninghill and South Ascot parish council’s annual general meeting, Ascot chairman of the Windsor District Chamber of Commerce, Jeremy Davies, spoke on behalf of worried traders.

He said: “The issue of parking seems to be a borough-wide affair, this whole issue didn’t come up at a borough council meeting, it was kept in the small print.

“One of the main concerns is that there was no consultation by anyone on the council to the business community. A lot of businesses are just about hanging on by their coattails to survive in the High Street as it.

“There is already one completely empty premises and one almost good as empty.

“It is all well and good if clients are coming from within the borough, but Windlesham is not a million miles away and people are probably going to think is there much point in coming to Sunninghill if I have to pay £1.50 extra, it is probably going to be another nail in the coffin for business.”

Estate agent Beverley Williams said: “I see people parking on the zig zag lines in Sunninghill High Street every day and this probably just going to get worse with people choosing to park in residential streets. There is no police presence and it is an accident waiting to happen.

“Because of the internet, people are not coming out shopping and we have to encourage them. If people can’t park, they are not really going to want to come in. Okay, it is only £1.50 but it is the principle and that car park was originally supposed to be for free parking.

“We are going to lose our village if we can’t get people in.”

Residents also expressed concerns that the proposed parking charges will coincide with planned gas main works in Sunninghill, though borough councillor Lynda Yong said herself and fellow borough councillors would push to ‘mitigate’ some of the problem and delay the gas works.