ANGRY protesters have labelled the decision to make council staff pay for parking at their place of work as 'ludicrous'.

Council staff were standing their ground on the steps of County Hall in Dorchester this morning to highlight the strong opposition and outrage to the introduction of employee parking charges.

The protest was organised by Dorset County Council branch of the GMB who claim it will have a major detrimental impact on employees.

GMB branch convenor Sarah Pattison said the charges will be implemented at the end of the month and will be spreading to all office-based sites in the future.

Speaking at the protest she said: "The impact of staff is quite dramatic, the parking rates are very high. This will have a knock-on affect to residents in the surrounding area, like Fordington and Poundbury, as staff will have little choice but to park on their streets. This has already caused a lot of upset with residents when similar issues happened at the hospital. 

"In terms of access it is difficult. A lot of people live in rural areas and since the park and ride no longer exists workers rely on their cars. Other staff need their cars as part of their job. Staff are effectively being charged for doing their job. It's ludicrous."

"We are willing to talk to management about the charges and negotiate a parking system but it seems a decision has already been made.

"We want our voices to be heard and that's what today is about. We are hoping that people will see the big changes that are taking place here and how staff have been excluded from the consultation process.

"We have gathered a lot of support today and we want to continue to build on it."

Amanda Brown, branch secretary for Unison added: "We have had a 16 per cent decrease in our staff salaries in the last four years. Making them pay for parking is just going to cause more poverty. We have members who are resulting to food banks and charitable donations."

DCC care coordinators Audrey Savage and Teresa Swatridge said the parking charges were "ridiculous".

They argued that without a parking permit they will be forced to park miles away which would impact on their job and has also raised health and safety concerns as they often work past 10pm and do not feel comfortable walking alone to their car at that time of night.

Dorset County Council's service director for environment Peter Moore said: "In line with many other local authorities and large employers, we are introducing charges for staff parking at County Hall and Loders car parks in Dorchester later this year, reducing the significant cost to the council taxpayer of providing staff parking in the process.”