HAVING read Vic Barlow’s comment in the Guardian’s Barlow’s Brew regarding Cheshire East Council’s latest idea to plough something like £35 million of our money into the volatile property arena.

I decline to use the word ‘invest’ as, with this council’s track record, it will more likely be the absolute opposite.

So CEC has £35 million of our money to ‘invest in the property business’ while we continue to see the daily and obstructive car parking mayhem that is Wilmslow today.

Residents of Wilmslow has suggested the council invests some of its money, sorry our money, in alleviating the on-street parking problem by the simple expedient of utilising its own existing car parks via building multi-storey parks at both Broadway Meadow and the Leisure Centre, ground-level parks.

RoW has talked with a car park developer whose expert’s advice that such could be built for less than £15,000 per space, at the most considerably less than a £1 million each build.

Simple maths will tell us the council will get its money back in three to four years – from then on it will be all profit (less staff and maintenance costs).

This is not a speculative property ‘investment’ as CEC is wanting to do with the speculative property market place, this is a sure winner for the council’s coffers and its local tax-payers who desperately need this relief.

We are further informed the car park builds would take approximately six months including planning approval.

When RoW has ‘discussed’ this suggestion with CEC we receive the very same responses – ‘We’ve no money!’ and ‘planning approval would take at least five years’. They are blindly offering only a yellow line ‘solution’ to on-street parking.

One does not need to be a genius to realise that vehicles will remove from a yellow line restriction to another road, thus moving the mayhem elsewhere. This is neither a short or long term solution; only multi-storey car parks will resolve the issue.

CEC by its own admission has a £35 million pot for speculative property purchases but is refusing to spend it on local and desperately needed remedial infrastructure developments, parking being just one of them and with a guaranteed return of capital plus profits in a short time frame.

Remember, on May 2, we have CEC and town/parish elections.

RoW will be fielding a wide number of candidates who will be ensuring they will be putting the very real concerns of the Wilmslow electorate way ahead of the current majority Conservative council.

You can stop this charade with your money continuing – vote for real change by voting Residents of Wilmslow on the May 2.

Manuel Golding Residents of Wilmslow