THE need for more car parking spaces in Cirencester has become a very ‘hot topic’ in recent months and CDC has allocated a sizeable sum to assess the best way forward and appears to favour a decked parking scheme in the Waterloo.

I feel decked parking at the Waterloo would itself bring problems apart from any aesthetic considerations of siting such a dominant structure so near to housing. 

To reach the car park will mean having to use the four-phase traffic lights and traffic is already queueing from the lights back to and around the Grove Lane roundabout at busy times.

The chamber of commerce has asked the council to provide more parking, and quickly, but it has not put forward suitable recommendations either. 

No-one has come up with an alternative site in preference to the Waterloo that I am aware of. 

There is no suitable site in or near the town centre.

I recommend a suitable site being the strip of land at the junction of Grove Lane and Burford Road with high hedging on either side with a new access off the Grove Lane roundabout to the car park. 

Those wishing to park and walk into town could do so; there are already pedestrian traffic lights nearby. 

This site would surely go a long way in helping to meet the 700 car parking shortage highlighted in the Standard on February 16.

The car park could include a pick up/drop off point for National Express on their routes to and from London which would save routing via Lewis Lane and Dyer Street back to the bypass.

With housing expansion on the edges of the town, actual and proposed, the present parking situation can only get worse. 

So come on Cirencester let’s do some serious thinking about where we can site a new car park. 

I am not sure decked parking in the Waterloo is the only answer.

DAVID ILIFFE
Cirencester