Councillors in Tenby have written to Pembrokeshire County Council in an attempt to resolve ongoing parking issues at the town’s Newell Hill.

Discussing a possible ‘residents parking’ scheme at the estate, members of the town council heard at a recent remote meeting that solving longstanding parking issues at Newell Hill had been a long process as previous PCC conditions of working within traditional council estates was dependant on the amount of council houses still in PCC ownership.

Councillors heard that there had been success at Tenby’s Knowling Mead some time ago where they managed to get around the policy to remove the problematic roundabout there, but not until now did there seem to be interest in dealing with Newell Hill in a similar way.

Clr. Mike Evans thanked the Deputy Mayor, Clr Mrs. Tracey Evans for all her previous work on the parking problems at Newell Hill; stating that he had long been working on changing the policy with regard to council estates and PCC were now nearly there.

There appeared to be agreement internally that PCC would no longer not look to undertake work on estates that were less than 80 per cent council owned unless in exceptional circumstances, members heard, which was good news for Newell Hill as it meant that work could be undertaken to create more parking facilities for residents.

Clr. Evans asked that that the town council now call upon PCC to look again at Newell Hill to introduce changes on the estate. He was aware that three or four schemes were likely to be put forward across the county to benefit from this change of policy but, given the past history of problems, he felt Newell Hill would be high on agenda.

The town clerk said he and Clr. Mrs. Evans had been in correspondence again recently about the long-standing issues over local emergency service volunteers being unable to get out of the estate to due to parked cars, highlighting recent incidents where the Fire Service first response driver couldn’t get out of Newell Hill which led to delays in the fire engine leaving the station.

As a result, the town clerk had again emailed representatives at PCC and it was believed that they had been looking into ways to get around the covenant on the play area to see if land could be released to create additional parking spaces. PCC’s streetcare and parking manager, Mr. Marc Owen had also suggested the introduction of a ‘residents parking’ scheme at the estate.

The difficulty the town clerk envisaged over a ‘residents parking’ scheme was PCC policy that only 50 per cent of spaces would be given over to residents parking, with only one car per house eligible for a permit and more permits than available spaces could be issued.

Clr. Mrs. Evans felt residents parking could work if spaces were made available on the Salterns car park but, given all the houses, if the allocation was only one car per house, she did not think there would be enough room solely on the estate to accommodate a ‘residents parking’ scheme.

Clr. Evans said that the change of policy he outlined earlier could see the creation of eight to ten more parking bays in the vicinity of the play area with four or five given over to residential bays and, if PCC thought they could earn money from a yearly permit fee per space, success was more likely.

He felt that the town council should write to PCC asking them to commit to providing 10 extra parking bays in Newell Hill, and that he would veto any residential permit bays within existing parking on the estate but could support 10 new bays if five were limited to residents only.

Clr. Mrs. Evans thanked Cllr Evans for bringing this up again, saying that this was such a problem at Newell Hill and caused a lot of ‘distress’ to residents.

It was resolved that a working party be established and that they be given plenary powers to author a letter to be sent to PCC about Newell Hill.