Plans submitted for new ‘five-storey’ car park in Southend

Councillors have agreed to a series of amendments to the budget proposed by the Conservative administration.

Hopeful - Labour's Matt Dent 

Among them was the suggestion of building a new multi-storey car park in Tylers Avenue.

It is also not clear how many parking spaces will be on offer but discussions at the meeting centred on the possibility of it being up to five storeys.

It would also be located just half a mile from Seaway car park which is set to be redeveloped into a leisure complex, a plan that has been slammed by seafront traders because it will mean a loss of almost 100 parking spaces.

Labour councillor Matt Dent said his party hopes the construction of a new multi-storey car park will help to address this issue.

“We hope this would make up for loss of parking spaces at Seaway but it would rely on more investigation before we can say,” he said.

“We’d like to see it make up for the loss and add more on top of that. It will also be nearer the High Street than the Seaway car park so hopefully that will also help local businesses.”

Andrew Moring, cabinet member for infrastructure, said: “We are always mindful of car parking capacity across the borough, and particularly in the central area of the town.

“With this in mind, I had already asked officers to evaluate the demand and cost of decking Tyler’s Avenue car park, and if viable to add it to the capital investment programme.

“We were therefore happy to work with opposition councillors to agree this budget amendment and subject to a viable business case, look at increasing parking capacity at this car park.”

Mr Moring went on to highlight that the council is also redeveloping the Gasworks site into a car park, which is also located near to Seaway and will offer additional places on the seafront. The plan and a business case for it will be added into the 2019/20 budget.