BUILDING new homes on key seafront and town centre car parks has been dismissed as a “ludicrous” move which could trigger a parking crisis.

Redevelopment plans for the gasworks car park on Southend seafront and Pitmans Close and Warrior Square in the town centre emerged last week when a design firm posted details of a feasibility study on its website.

The council-commissioned study looks at how ten council-owned sites could be turned into housing, including three major car parks.

Tory councillor Kevin Buck said: “This would be a problem for the whole town.

“Southend doesn’t enjoy the same sort of integrated public transport as other large towns, we don’t even have a park-and-ride scheme. If we want to encourage people to visit, people will come by car and we cannot live in denial about that.”

He pointed to the huge £500m plan to bulldoze tower blocks and build new homes on the Queensway estate, adding: “We also need homes but if we look at plans for Queensway for example, that is going to be significantly and grossly under allocated for parking with only 0.7 parking spaces per property against average of 1.4 for the east of the town where Queensway will be built. Where is everyone going to park?

“Southend is already the seventh most densely populated area in the country outside of London, to do away with car parks is ludicrous.”

Mr Buck also highlighted the gasworks car park as a particular concern.

The council has spent the past year claiming the car park will be expanded to make up for more than 100 parking spaces that may be lost if the Seaway car park, off Lucy Road, is redeveloped into a new leisure complex.

The decision now sits with the Secretary of State.

He added: “The fact that the feasibility study was being undertaken was withheld should be a concern to everybody.”

He added that if his party is elected in May next year, he would explore how to keep gasworks as a car park.

Independent councillor Ron Woodley, who oversees transport in the town, said he was unaware the feasibility study had been undertaken and blamed “silo thinking” within the council.

Furthermore, he called it a “waste of space” as a similar study was created in 2016 and could have simply been updated.

He said: “This was done by members of the housing team and they did not involve the highways team, the transport team or me to ask whether there are issues with it.

“When it was presented to me, I immediately said it was a waste of space as it will never happen under my remit.”

He added: “I do not intend to lose parking spaces. We need to make sure if we ever build on any existing car parks then we allocate sufficient parking for those developments.”