May I take this opportunity to support our local mayors and hope they were successful in obtaining signatures for their petition against car parking charges.

Whenever local or national governments have a budget deficit they find another scheme to raise taxes. Make no mistake, the car parking charges proposed by Forest of Dean District Council are effectively an additional tax.

There are several issues that concern me with regard to these proposed charges:

The introduction of charges will hurt local businesses by giving drivers an additional excuse to go elsewhere to do their business.

Most employees of town centre businesses using the car parks will have to pay £7.50 a week or £390 per year. Before tax this will equate to about £520 per year from gross salary.

Council employees in Coleford will still have free car parking. This is hardly fair and equitable. Onroad car parking, which is already a major problem, will get worse.

The Co-op car park in Cinderford is shared by a doctor's surgery. As this car park will remain free there will be greater pressure on space making it more difficult for people to access the surgery.

The figures prepared by RTA appear to be very judgemental and rely on six penalty charges a day. This must be an estimate as they cannot possibly know how many people will break a law that does not yet exist.

According to RTA enforcement charges will be £47,470 a year. Including costs of employment this would appear to equate to two employees a year which hardly seems adequate to police 11 car parks in six different towns 6 days a week, 52 weeks per year. The costs also do not appear to allow for travelling costs between the car parks.

As a retired chartered accountant I would like to offer my time to the local mayors to carry out an in depth review of the RTA assessment as presented to the district council. My time would of course be free of charge.

– Colin Guyton, UKIP secretary, Forest of Dean Branch, The Great Barn, Park Farm, High Street, Ruardean.