CREDITON Town Councillors have decided that the road markings it has been seeking to warn motorists not to park in Crediton High Street’s loading bays will be red.

Hundreds of motorists have been fined for parking in the loading bays in recent years mostly because they did not see the signs on the roads or the extended white line indicating it is a loading bay.

It was in January that a Crediton Town Councillor had a meeting, arranged with the help of and accompanied by Mel Stride, MP for Central Devon, with the Department for Transport.

At that meeting the Department for Transport agreed that the dual use loading bays could be a different colour to make it more obvious that they were for loading only until 2pm.

After this came the decision of colour of the road markings.

The town council’s policy and forward planning committee was split over buff or red, and asked for more exact samples of the colour from Devon County Council and where it had been used so that town councillors could go and have a look. That was in May.

At Tuesday’s Town Council committee meeting, the chairman, Cllr Liz Brookes-Hocking said they wanted to make the dual use loading bays as obvious as possible, which meant red.

Cllr Andi Wyer commented: “People need to think that they are parking somewhere that is odd. They need to think they should check with the parking signs.”

Councillors agreed to ask for the loading bay outside the Market Street council offices to be removed and be normal parking.

They are asking for the times for the loading bay outside the High Street Tesco store to be changed to loading between 8am and 5pm. This would mean there was a space for loading and unloading on the High Street during the afternoons.

Devon County Council had told the town council it would cost £3,800 to colour the three dual use loading bays.

This money to pay for the work is to come from the town council’s economic development fund into which it has been saving for some time because it knew the town’s economic development would need money in the future.

Everyone agreed they wanted no more delays in getting the work done. The town clerk was to contact the county council the next day.

It is understood that as well as not paying for the work to be done, the county council would not maintain the three coloured dual use loading bays.

Sue Read