THE chief executive of Swindon Borough Council, Gavin Jones, has said the idea of pulling the plug on parking charges in the town is simply not a reality.

Speaking on the idea of scrapping all car parking charges in the town in the future, Mr Jones said there were no fixed plans for when or if the idea would ever come into fruition.

He said: “Strategically the council would like to be able to reduce its dependency on parking income.

“But, at the moment, we cannot do that as the money this generates underpins vital services in the town.

“At the moment, car parking is generating approximately £6m a year and that is a lot of money.

“It is one of our biggest sources of income.

“There is no strategy in place to reduce this income at this time or in the near future.

“It is not mapped out at the moment but we can’t rely on that source of income in the long term.

“It is a very difficult paradigm.

“There is no definitive answer really.”

Mr Jones said that it was the council’s intention to look at all the information available on the town centre car parks and work with the local businesses there.

He said that naturally there had been a decline in the number of people using the car parks because of the recession but said that the lower rates in the period before Christmas were productive.

He said: “We need to sit down and have a look at all of the data on the footfall in the town centre and see what we can do to encourage this to grow.

“We need to look at the bigger picture of what is available in the town centre, how much it costs to park there etc.

“It is the common aim of a number of local authorities to reduce the amount they rely on parking income.

“We will constantly look at this.”