PLEASE forgive my writing to you in this manner ahead of your budget meeting but I feel this is a very important matter and one far removed from my usual medium of satirical poetry.

Some time ago you introduced free parking after 3pm in Cirencester car parks as a temporary measure.

This was subsequently increased and after a campaign by local Liberal Democrats has been proposed for a further extension.

However this is not enough.

Over the past year Cirencester has suffered disruption on a scale unprecedented in its 2000 year history.

Historic artefacts have been discarded, a market place which evolved over hundreds of years has been thoughtlessly disrupted to create a neo-Italianate piazza with cobblestones, stealth kerbs and a confusion of traffic and pedestrians unknown since the 1920s, in an impossibly long drawn out period of dust, dirt and builder’s buttock cleavage. 

Even the Luftwaffe was unable to inflict such terrible scars on our beloved market town, this jewel in the Cotswold crown, this oasis of placidity in the maelstrom of twentieth century living, this island of Englishness in the ocean of bland pan-European sameness, this sceptred aisle, this beloved place which sits so deeply into our hearts that the slightest mark upon its fabric is like a sabre thrust deep into our very souls.

Dramatic action is needed dear councillors, Cirencester’s very existence as a thriving centre for retirement homes, charity shops and estate agents is under threat.

Do we want the whole town to become a giant office connected to the outside world by super fast optical fibre broadband, a thriving centre for entrepreneurs, a place with no place for idlers and loafers, where the populace shop in Witney, Swindon, Stroud and Amazon?

No Councillors, action is needed now.

First we should scrap parking charges. 

Parking should be restricted to three hours to discourage workers by arranging for parking machines to issue tickets to this effect. 

Failure to display a valid ticket should incur a fine of £25 or £75 if not paid promptly.

Secondly upon the parking ticket should be a voucher for £5 redeemable against any coffee, tea, biscuit, pastry or other confectionary purchased in any participating establishment.

This could be paid from the accumulated car parking revenues accrued over many years and paid by CDC at the rate of 50 per cent of the face value of the of the voucher to spread the expense equitably between CDC and the participating establishments.

Only by offering not only the free parking and free coffee offered by the major retailers such as Waitrose, but also free biscuits or a pastry, can Cirencester hope to retain and regain the legions of faithful shoppers and visitors who so valued the ambience of the old Cirencester and for whom the lure of free coffee and fear of the crazy shared spaces and stealth curb is proving too much now the heart has been ripped from their beloved town.

Please bring back the halcyon days when the market had more than four stalls, when hundreds of happy shoppers piled off the trams on market days, when blue birds flew over the Abbey Grounds, and the sun always shone and a nightingale sang in Market Square.

Thank you for reading this.

AL SEPERT
Cirencester