£800k to resurface car parks

The district council is set to spend £800,000 to carry out ‘essential’ resurfacing on a number of car parks.

Wychavon District Council has revealed plans to spend the money on repairing the surfaces in Droitwich, Pershore, Evesham and Broadway across the next three years.

After carrying out inspections on its car parks, the council found that several of its pay and display car parks needed “essential” resurfacing.

The work will be carried out across the next three years with those deemed to be in most in need of repairing fixed first, starting with Droitwich High Street car park.

A report, which will be discussed by the council’s executive board at a meeting on February 1, said the repair work would be funded from the council’s reserves and ‘capital receipts’ which is the money the council receives from selling off assets.

In the next 12 months, the council expects to carry out work on the 186-bay Droitwich High Street car park, which has already seen a number of repairs and the ‘patchy’ surface needs attention to avoid trips and falls, as well as the 32 bays at Friar Street car park in Droitwich and the 279 bay short-and-long-stay car parks at the Civic Centre in Pershore.

Both the hospital 37 short-stay car park, which the council said is its ‘immediate’ priority, and the 242 spaces at the long-stay car park at the Wychavon District Council headquarters at the Civic Centre would be repaired with the council believing that carrying out the work at the same time might cut costs.

The work in the three areas would cost approximately £390,000.

The council would then move to completely resurface Oat Street car park in Evesham and then to the ‘lower part’ of Droitwich Lido car park.

The district council said the work it expects to carry out in 2023/24 would cost at least £230,000.

The final part of the car park resurfacing work includes plans to close the entire Broadway High Street car park and completely resurface it.

The council said it was doubtful the 146-bay car park could be resurfaced if it stayed open partially during the work.

Council bosses said an extra £30,000 would be included in the budget as a ‘contingency plan’ in case costs rise or inflation does not fall in the next three years.