A car park in the centre of Douglas is set to change from short to long-stay, the council decided this week.

Chester Street car park is owned by the Department of Infrastructure and operated by Douglas Council.

The local authority’s executive committee recently considered a report that would see the car park’s lower two levels changed to ditch the current three-hour limit.

Such a move would bring the two levels in line with the rest of the car park and it is hoped would increase the use of Chester Street by commuters.

The report says that demand for long-stay parking has increased while short-term demand has dropped.

The report adds: ’This trend has been further stimulated by the temporary introduction of short-stay parking on the Loch Promenade walkway.’

It added: ’The intention of providing short-stay car parking was to enable visitors to the town centre to park for a relatively short period, such as for shopping, rather than for commuters, who parked all day whilst at work.

’Therefore, the Drumgold Street [Marks & Spencer] car park would remain short-stay as it currently had capacity available (apart from peak periods, such as at Christmas).’

It was also noted that four electric vehicle charging points were located on level two of the Chester Street car park. Currently, their maximum use is three hours.

By making level two long-stay, this would limit use of the charging points to only four cars per day. Therefore, it was recommended that the maximum stay for the EV charging spaces be set at four hours.

While the council operates the car park under the terms of a licence agreement with the DoI, the agreement does not stipulate that the car park must provide short-stay parking.

As well as blaming the introduction of free parking on the promenade, some councillors have also blamed the ending of free Sunday parking as a reason behind the drop off in use of Chester Street by shoppers.