There has been outrage at plans to introduce car parking charges in a Herefordshire town.

“Nothing could do more harm to Kington – we have to fight this,” ward councillor Terry James told the town’s councillors this week.

“It will damage the town, its residents and businesses, many of which are small independents,” he said, describing it as another “anti-car” policy from the county council.

Kington’s mayor Coun Bob Widdowson said: “This has come out the blue, and so much detail is missing. It’s bonkers.”

His suggestion of a public meeting to be held in early February to debate the issue was supported by fellow councillors, and by the town’s Chamber of Trade chair Emma Hancocks, who said it would “show we mean business”.

She has written on behalf of traders to Herefordshire Council chief executive Paul Walker to oppose the plan, which she said is “not well understood at all by businesses and residents”.

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Herefordshire Council’s head of transport Coun John Harrington told the town council last month it intended to introduce the charges in all of Kington’s car parks from April 1.

Parking in the town’s largest car park, off the High Street, will cost 80p an hour, or £4 all day. The car park on Market Hall Street would charge 50p an hour, or £2 all day, and the Love Lane car park would charge a flat £1 all day.

The charges at the Mill Street car park, the only one of the four to currently charge, will remain at 50p an hour or £2 all day.

Coun Harrington’s letter said parking should reflect the council’s ambition to “apply policy equally across our market towns”, and undertook to conduct a transport study for the town.

But he said that the town council’s stated wish to take over management of the car parks would require it to compensate the county for its likely loss of income from them, which he put at £33,500 a year once charges were introduced.

Coun James also wrote to Paul Walker in response, saying that a presentation he and council leader David Hitchiner had just given to local businesses had been shown to be “a complete sham” by the subsequent parking charges announcement.

The town council also agreed to write to Herefordshire Council outlining the grounds for its “strong opposition” to the plan, and inviting cabinet members to attend the planned public meeting.

The town’s historic layout meant residents, many on low incomes, lack on-street parking and so rely on the car parks, it pointed out.

Coun James added that a recent funeral in the town had been seen over-zealous parking enforcement by Herefordshire Council officers, with the undertaker’s and mourners’ cars being ticketed.

“They have lost all semblance of being servants of the town,” he said.