Free Saturday parking in Strabane over Christmas

DERRY City and Strabane District Council has approved plans for free Saturday parking in Strabane over Christmas.

Following a proposal by Sinn Féin councillor Paul Boggs at May’s Full Council Meeting, officers carried out a scoping exercise around actions to incentivise shopping in Strabane’s town centre.

At a Business and Culture Committee meeting on Tuesday of last week head of Business, Kevin O’Connor said the five Saturdays leading up to Christmas are traditionally the busiest shopping days of the year in the UK and Ireland.

Mr O’Connor noted that Strabane had four charged car parks, providing a total of 253 parking bays, and officers had looked at several incentives to boost the town centre’s profile, including the year-round lowering of tariffs at paid car parks.

“Those types of decisions would maybe need to form part of a rates estimate process because they have a bigger knock-on impact,” he said. “So we looked at the cost of trying to incentivise free parking on specific days…

“It would also be important to then look at the data after to see if it raised footfall or was not necessarily to do with car parking at all, so I think there’s an opportunity to really learn from this.”

Sinn Féin councillor Brian Harte welcomed the scheme as a way to “encourage people to shop local and support small businesses.”

He said, “We have listened to local business owners who have raised concerns about reducing footfall in Strabane town centre, and we are committed to doing what we can to support businesses and help our local independent retailers thrive.”

“This will give Christmas shoppers the opportunity to avail of free car parking, and I hope that people will come into the town centre and enjoy what small businesses have to offer.”