Plans to ease parking pressures at Crawley’s Tilgate Park

The news was shared by Chris Mullins, cabinet member for wellbeing, during a meeting of the full council.

The park attracts visitors from miles around and Tilgate residents are often left frustrated to find their streets packed with cars which couldn’t find space in the official car parks.

Mr Mullins said: “At times we do get spillage out into Tilgate – which I do have a problem with – but that’s basically because our car parks are packed out.

“It’s full up up there and there’s an overflow into Tilgate which needs to be sorted.

“It’s something we’re looking into – and whether we can build an overflow car park in Tilgate is one of the things we’re looking at.”

No further information was provided.

A rise in parking charges in both the town centre and Tilgate Park was the subject of much discussion during the meeting.

A consultation into the proposed increases – which would add between 10p and 50p to a ticket depending on the length of stay – ended in January.

If approved, the changes would see charges go up at the Town Hall multi-storey, Tilgate Park, the Fisherman’s car park and Orchard Street – surface and multi-storey.

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One-third of the council’s seats are up for election in May, and Conservative members latched on to what has been a contentious issue, raising concerns about the impact it would have on both the town centre and park users.

Duncan Crow (Con, Furnace Green) said: “We know that town centre retail has a national long-term trend of struggling due to the growth of online shopping – and of course the pandemic has only exacerbated that.

“We do need to be making it easy and not expensive for people to come to Crawley town centre and support the many retail and leisure businesses we have.

“We shouldn’t be putting up our car parking charges yet again next year – and if I’m delivering the budget next year [there’s] an undertaking that we won’t be.”

Mr Crow said residents faced a ‘double whammy’ when it came to Tilgate Park, where an increase in charges would be coupled with an extending of the charging hours.

He added: “Bringing forward the charging time from 11am to 9am is going to disproportionately affect Crawley residents as it tends to be them who come for morning walks and exercise in the park – including, of course, the Tilgate Park Run.”

Maureen Mwagale (Con, Tilgate) said: “Time and again, these incremental price increases affect the poorest.

“This is seriously going to impact all those families who go to the park every weekend to try to do a bit of free fitness.”

But council leader Peter Lamb said the arguments, especially when it came to town centre parking charges, were ‘spurious’.

He told the meeting that the fees were below the market rate and pledged to freeze them in Tilgate Park in next year’s budget.

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