Tories vote against a strategy to manage Brentwood's night time economy

Despite agreeing with us over the need for an urgent strategy to manage Brentwood at night for our residents, the Tories' voted against our motion that called for:

"......the council to implement an urgent strategy to manage Brentwood's night time economy.

and asked for

"....an investigation of other councils' strategies and for Brentwood Council to consider issues and solutions such as night time car parking charges, toilet facility provision, licensed premises contributions and other anti social issues."

Cllr Barry Aspinell, who tabled the motion, said:

"Once again the Tories are more concerned about petty point scoring rather than working together for residents.

"Their excuse is always "we are already doing it" but in the nine years they have been in power no robust plan for managing our night time problems has even been in place. What a coincidence that now we raise it formally, it's already happening and, yet, still nothing can be produced."

"The better response would have been "Yes, let's vote for it we are all in agreement" but their action was to launch in to an hour long debate that needn't have been had."

In addition, Cllr David Kendall tabled a motion to review night time parking charges thus:

"We welcome our visitors to Brentwood in the evening but realise that there is a dichotomy between day time and night time parking charges where you pay £10 for 6 hours of parking during the day but nothing at night, which is unfair to those businesses who operate during the day and our residents who are the most regular supporters of local traders during the day.

"We ask for some level of fairness and for a charge at night to be introduced ASAP, offsetting the cost to our locals residents during the day and aiding our day time operating businesses and local traders."

Predictably, this also got voted down by the Tories, doing nothing to help our local traders.