People who use the car park at Central Baths but don't use the leisure centre will be asked to pay for their parking in future.

Wolverhampton City Council has been considering ways to ease parking problems at the popular city centre facility which has left leisure centre customers finding it increasingly hard to park during peak times.

The number of parking places available has been limited by motorists who don't use the facility but who take up spaces for long periods of time.

As a result, the city council will introduce pay and display facilities for people wishing to park there - with full refunds available for customers who use Central Baths.

Councillor Elias Mattu, Wolverhampton City Council's Cabinet Member for Leisure and Communities, said: "We want to ensure that our customers don't have a problem when it comes to parking at Central Baths and have looked at ways we can encourage people to only park there when they want to use the facility.

"We have therefore agreed to introduce a short stay, pay and display scheme, whereby people would pay to park at Central Baths and then be refunded when they use the facility.

"This would be similar to the scheme successfully operated by the nearby Asda supermarket, and means that we can continue to offer our customers free parking.

"People who aren't intending to use Central Baths would still be able to park there, but we would encourage them to park elsewhere and as part of this we are putting in a time limit of 4 hours, to prevent people from parking there all day."

The charges, which are expected to be introduced in September 2013, will be 50 pence for up to an hour, £1 for up to 2 hours, £2 for up to 3 hours and £3.50 for up to 4 hours.

  • released: Tuesday 2 July, 2013