Five car parks on Dartmoor will soon have parking charges introduced to help conserve the national park.

At its meeting on October 6, Dartmoor National Park Authority made the decision to implement charges for vehicle parking at Postbridge, Meldon Reservoir, Haytor and Newbridge car parks — to bring it in line with its car park at Princetown.

The decision follows a period of public consultation and members of the authority considered the feedback from this prior to making their decision.

The public consultation process showed that there were wide ranging views about the principle of having to pay to park within a national park. However, it was apparent that the public expected and were generally supportive of the concept of paying to park; provided that income raised was re-invested towards the cost of maintaining high quality facilities and visitor services.

Andrew Watson, head of recreation, access and estates, said: ‘The authority is facing increased challenges to effectively fund the maintenance of the car parks and associated facilities it has responsibility for.

‘With greatly reduced resources the national park has to make tough decisions in order to continue to effectively carry out its primary purpose of conservation.

‘The current honesty box system employed at these sites does not raise enough income to cover costs and with an estimated bill for Haytor, Postbridge and Meldon alone being over £172,000 we have to look to formalising charging to make maintaining these facilities more affordable.’

An honesty box system at the national park car park in Princetown was replaced by formal car parking charges in 2013, significantly increasing income and enabling a more affordable maintenance programme.

Parking charges would be the same as those currently in place at Princetown — cars £1 up to 3 hours or £2 all day, coaches /PSVs £4 and a flat rate charge of £1 per day will be applied to Blue Badge holders.

Charges will apply 10am to 6pm seven days a week. 

Formal car park charging at Haytor, Postbridge, Meldon Reservoir and Newbridge car parks will begin from April 1, 2018.