READER’S LETTER: CEC members are destroying Nantwich traders

Dear Editor,
Cheshire East Council has obviously been infiltrated by a devious group of councillors with dastardly aims.

Not branches of the Monday Club, ERG or Momentum, but even more devastating to the town of Nantwich.

I refer, of course, to the shadowy ‘MAD NITS’ — *M*embers *A*iming to *D*estroy *N*antwich *I*ndependent *T*raders and *S*hops.

For their own sinister reasons these Council Members have decided to close down all the shops in Nantwich and direct shoppers to supermarkets outside the town.

They do this by a simple but obvious method—Preventing Parking in the town!

Farfetched? Consider the facts:-

* Huge ex Gas Works area, off Welsh Row, currently used for informal parking by up to 300 cars, already sold off for development in the near future, without replacement spaces.

* Car Park on Manor Road, off Beam Street, once accommodating 50 or so cars, sold off for development about 5 years ago, without replacement spaces.

* Car parking charges consistently maintained at a higher level than nearby towns, like Congleton, Sandbach, Alsager and Middlewich.

* To stamp out the heinous crime of occasionally passing your ticket to someone else as you left a car park, so they got 30 minutes free parking, the introduction, about 4 years ago, of a requirement to enter your full car registration in the machine before a ticket was issued. Perfectly designed to slow up the transaction, delay parking and irritate shoppers, especially those who do not expect it. A piece of bureaucracy very rarely seen in other towns in the country, certainly not in places that actually want to attract visitors.

* Most recently and best of all! No longer allowing people to use cash in the machines… No choice of using coins; a credit card is now mandatory and woe betide if you haven’t got one with you. Causing queues and consternation at the machines, encouraging people to gather together and lean over each to see how the system works and catch coronavirus at the same time. Making the car parks harder to use without any discernible benefit. If Cheshire East was worried about cash being stolen, had they thought about reinforcing the machines, more frequent cash emptying or ‘smart liquid’ being sprayed over thieves who attack the machines? If they were worried about a virus on the coins, had they thought of disinfecting them before counting? No! Because additional delay and distress to the public is easier and fits in with the scheme to stop people using the car parks. The obvious plan of the MAD NITS is to inconvenience shoppers to such a degree that they drive to Aldi, Sainsbury’s or Morrison’s where you do not have to spend 15 minutes finding a machine, queuing, pressing buttons to enter car registration and card details, waiting for the ticket to print, returning to your car and checking your blood pressure because of the vile plotting of the MAD NITS.

Any chance you can do anything about this, please?

Regards,

William Riddell Graham
Nantwich