After consultation the residents parking proposal for Kingswear has moved onto the next stage.

Around 71 per cent of the parish responded to the consultation and of those about 71 per cent said they were in support of the parking scheme proposal.

The Kingswear Parish Council Resident’s Parking Working Group was set up to try and resolve the parking issues in the parish, consisting of councillors and residents.

The original parking proposal which went out to consultation recently would make most of Kingswear a residents’ parking area operating from 9am to 6pm through the purchase of permits which residents, landlords, tenants, builders and employees could all apply for.

At the full council meeting of Kingswear Parish Council, councillors decided to move forwards with the proposals and consult with Neil Oxton from Devon Highways about the amended proposals and ask for an estimate of the cost of implementing this scheme.

Cllr Lucy Payne who heads up the working group said it had received useful feedback from the consultation and realised the proposals needed to be modified.

She explained the residents living in the roads where there are no parking restrictions voted very much in favour of something being done. However, of the 214 responses seven expressed concern with the parish spending £10,000 on the scheme and seven said they were concerned about the commuters to Dartmouth.

The proposed changes include for all roads in Kingswear village to be resident permit parking only in the hours 10am to 11am, 2pm to 3pm and 5pm to 6pm; all residents will be able to have one book of 30 visitor permits per annum but not to be used on Lower Contour Road; only landlords on Ridley Hill, Higher Contour Road, Church Hill and Wood Lane will be allowed to have pool permits; permit parking will be available all the way up to the top of Waterhead Break and the permits will not be available for Hillhead and outlying settlements.

At the full council meeting, Cllr Jonathan Hawkins said he didn’t know how the parish council would fund this parking scheme and was eager to find out how much it would cost. Cllr Edward Jones said he was concerned about the enforcement of the parking scheme.

After consulting Highways, Cllr Payne will return to the council with the results to decide the next step.