Parking charges in Cookstown ‘likely’ to start this September

MID Ulster District Council has been told it will likely be September before car parking charges are introduced in Cookstown.

The introduction of paid-for parking in the town is one of a number of measures approved by the council as part of its decision to increase domestic rates in the area by 7.3 per-cent.

At a recent meeting of the local authority’s environment committee, Sinn Fein’s Brian McGuigan started a discussion on the planned closure of five recycling centres in the district and proposed a working group was formed to discuss the matter.

UUP councillor, Trevor Wilson, who has been opposed to the introduction of parking charges in Cookstown from the beginning, said that one measure should not be cherry picked for discussion over others and called for the working group to also look at the parking charges in Cookstown and grass verge cutting which are to be implemented.

After some back and forth between councillors, deputy chief executive, Anne-Marie Campbell, told the committee parking charges would not be introduced in Cookstown before the results of the agreed pilot scheme were brought to committee.

“There is a pilot meant to be happening and basically nothing will be happening in Cookstown until the results of that pilot come back and Terry Scullion, council’s assistant director of property services, can update on timescales around that,” she said.

Mr Scullion told the chamber that a pilot scheme in Magherafelt is set to be implemented “after the Easter period”.

“There will then be a number of weeks which will take us into May to get the car park operational but that is the intention at this stage,” he said.

“The agreement that was made through council was to bring a report back on the impact of the arrangement. It is hoped a report would be brought back to committee in the summer or early autumn, once that has had the chance to run for a number of months.”

Cllr Wilson observed that, according to the report circulated at the rates meeting, the introduction of the parking charges was forecast to generate £100,000 in 2023/24.