The Parish Council has been trying to get the White Horse Mews car park extended for years now. WDDC has not been very helpful and the matter has dragged on and on. It was raised at the public meeting held in March(?) with Oliver Letwin.
Among the many efforts to get the project moving a petition was gathered at the Newsagent's. If I remember correctly, two or three hundred signatures were gathered supporting the removal of the trees and shrubs to allow for an extra six spaces.
The matter first came up in the summer of 2003 when someone pointed out that the car park was sometimes full. I remember that during that summer, sometimes, it was. Perhaps somebody had lots of visitors that year. Since then a full car park has been a rare occurence despite repeated protestations by just about everyone to the contrary. When the petition was being gathered I did a little survey over a three week period actually counting the number of spaces - yes I know I should get out more. On average there were eight free spaces, there were often eleven or more and on not one of the sixty visits I made was it full. I even did a graph and got a very nice distribution curve.
Over the past three years (nearly) I have kept an eye on the car park usage and have probably visited it three or four hundred times at all hours and days. Mostly there are five to ten free spaces and on only three occasions was it full. Parking always brings out passions in people and I wonder if passion rather than reason is why a problem is being seen where none exists.
