ANGRY business leaders have condemned new on-street parking charges in Dorchester as a deterrent to shoppers.

Using one of the 263 spaces in the town centre will now cost up to 60p an hour during the day. Overnight parking costs 50p. The charges were introduced on Saturday.

Both Dorchester Chamber of Commerce leaders are concerned that it discourages casual visitors from spending time in the county town and have questioned whether the £85,644 Dorset County Council has pumped into the scheme has been well spent.

Newly-elected chief executive Peter Noble said the charges were an additional burden to businesses and visitors and their introduction was absurd.

He said: "If the council want to support businesses they should cancel the parking charges. My concern is that people who are enjoying themselves in the town will be encouraged to leave early because of the time they have left on the parking meter.

"The council bang on about encouraging people to visit Dorchester then set about deterring everybody. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

"It comes down to people making decisions at a high level without caring what the decision does for people affected by it, or even understanding the economics of it.

"It doesn't make sense to bring in a change which will deter shoppers from staying in the town."

Mr Noble said the charges had not been properly justified and not enough consultation had been carried out.

He said: "It is my understanding that it is not legal to charge for parking unless it is part of a traffic management scheme but all the council are doing is charging for parking; what about the changes to traffic management?

"Most people I have spoken to in town claim that no consultation has taken place. No opportunity has been made available to the businesses in Dorchester to make proper representation and the activity is a form of stealth.

"The council has simply over-ridden the wishes of the businesses and the people who pay them, and driven another nail in the coffin of Dorchester as a nice place to go in to shop, eat and for the tourists to visit and spend some money in the businesses."

Chamber president Alistair Chisholm said the complete conversion of the lower end of South Street, which was blocked off to traffic earlier this year, to a re-paved pedestrian-only zone deserved priority over the implementation of on-street parking.

He said: "The £80,000 they spent on the new parking scheme should have been used to level off the end of South Street. Two thirds of the people on South Street are at the Corn Exchange end. Nobody's down at the bottom end because it still looks like a road.

"People like coming to Dorchester and I don't think that's going to change but I don't doubt that shoppers will be further irritated by the new parking charges. It's not the most diplomatic thing to be doing at this time. Why didn't they put something that will be of benefit to business, like finishing South Street, ahead of something that may irritate them?"

Dorset County Council transportation manager Tim Westwood said: "I refute the suggestion there hasn't been any consultation. There have been massive amounts. We went to the county council committee last October following widespread discussion, which was extensively reported in the press."

He said the change was necessary to prevent parking operations in the county town putting an unnecessary burden on council tax payers.

"When the county council decriminalised parking enforcement and took over responsibility for it from the police, the scheme was designed to be cost neutral; to operate at no cost to the council tax payer.

"Over the years we've started to run into deficit. So the first part of revenue from the parking charges will be to make sure we bring the budget back into a neutral position for the council tax payer.

"If we eventually make an excess, we will take the information back to council and tell them how much money we have. The council will have to, legally, spend that money on other transportation and environment schemes."

He said shoppers should accept that parking in towns like Dorchester costs money.

He said: "There were already time restrictions on parking on the street in Dorchester. In most places it is an hour and in Trinity Street it would have been half an hour. So people would be watching the time they had left anyway.

"Where else can people go to a town the size of Dorchester and park for nothing? The fact is the days when people can come into towns and park for free are behind us."