In reference to your article, on Page 4 of last week’s Journal edition No. 2,215, regarding B&NES plans to introduce charging for using the public car parks in Midsomer Norton and Radstock. In the mid-1980s, I would advise your readers, as follows.

I was President of the Norton Radstock Chamber of Commerce; succeeding from Terry Towler and Preceding Shirley Steel. My presidency was at the time of The Hollies redevelopment and the then Wansdyke District Council felt that it would be a good idea to institute car parking charges in our towns. I met with the Council and, after what was a sometimes heated discussion, they accepted that there would be no charges for the use of the Public Car Parks in our two towns. The argument that I put forward was that the building of new Safeway supermarket (now Sainsbury’s), which involved the sacrifice of the Hollies public open gardens, should not be a reason to introduce public car parking charges, to the detriment of the other traders in the town, a town which then enjoyed historical free car parking.

Wansdyke District Council’s area became part of B&NES but the new Council were, surely, the inheritors of the agreement that the Norton Radstock Chamber of Commerce had negotiated with the former Local Authority.

I would therefore ask that the current presidents, of the local Chambers of Commerce, refer B&NES back to what was agreed during my term as President. The relevant agreement should, I hope, have been the subject of the minutes of the Chamber and also in the archives of Wansdyke District Council, which B&NES should now hold.