SHOPKEEPERS in Lancaster are trying to force the city council to cancel their controversial new parking system just three weeks after it started. After a crisis meeting held earlier this week, traders in the city have decided to lobby city councillors over the voucher parking system which they say is driving people away. Wendy Allen, the manager of Pizza Margherita on Moor Lane in the city, called the meeting and was amazed at the response.

She told the Citizen: "I just wrote a letter to one or two people and the bush-telephone seemed to do the rest.

"More than 70 people turned up because everybody feels very strongly about the way this voucher parking system is affecting their business.

"We are driving away the people who bring the money into Lancaster. This ill-conceived scheme is destroying businesses because people are going elsewhere to spend."

Now, the 70 traders who attended the meeting are planning to send a petition to the council explaining just how much they have each lost since the new system started.

Wendy added: "We would like to think that we can make them stop and think. Something will have to be done because there are people out there who are hanging on by their fingernails."

Voucher parking, a Lancashire County Council pilot scheme concentrated in the centre of Lancaster, is designed to reduce the traffic problems caused by long-term parking on the city streets. It was started on Thursday May 1 and has caused great debate in the city with various shops and outlets refusing to sell the vouchers for the council and many people objecting to the scheme. See Letters to the Editor on page 12.

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