Wharf Road car park in Grantham to partially close as £280,000 worth of resurfacing is carried out

More than £280,000 of resurfacing work will be carried out at a Grantham car park.

Councillors at South Kesteven District Council have awarded a £283, 305.14 contract to Rio Asphalt & Paving Co Ltd over three years, to complete the improvements to Wharf Road multi-storey car park.

Councillors voted to accept the recommendation for this contractor at a cabinet meeting yesterday (Tuesday, July 8).

Deputy leader of the district council Richard Cleaver (Ind), who is also a county councillor, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that a 'backlog' of maintenance work for the car park has built up over time.

He said: “This project is needed because the council has allowed a backlog of maintenance to build up. We really need to do this work immediately to make sure that the car park is as attractive as it can be.

“We have already made improvements to the lighting and the firedoors, but we need to do the structural work too. We’re absolutely committed to making Grantham a thriving town.”

The district council leases and maintains the car park and it’s contractually obliged to resurface it under the conditions of the lease.

It said the car park is starting to deteriorate with concrete plank structural fixings having corroded just below the third level of the car park.

The council said the improvements will stop the carpark from deteriorating any further.

Head of property services and ICT at South Kesteven District Council, Gyles Teasdale, said that the resurfacing work has been carefully considered.

He said: “We’ve worked with Pick Everard, who are the consultants on the design, and they’ve drawn together the programme of works for the next 10 years across the whole car park. We’ve liaised with the landlord and they’ve agreed with that programme of works.

“The design is by Pick Everard and we’ve had various subcontractors carry out the sampling of the surfacing, the structure and make-up of that surface to make sure the works are accurate and fit for purpose.”

Coun Cleaver said that the council has tried to mitigate the disruption caused by the improvements.

He said: “We are only closing part of the car park and it’s rarely fully used so there’s not likely to be a loss of income.”

He added: “We know that the carpark is being used more because of the one and two-hour free parking, so this makes it worthwhile for us to improve this carpark.”

Deputy chief executive at the district council, Richard Wyles, said that there’s enough space in the car park to accommodate closing part of it off.

He added: “The latest utilisation confirms that the ca rpark is still operating at about 50% capacity. We have seen an uptick in the response to the free parking that was introduced in January but it’s still operating at a very low capacity level.

“There will be some disruption to some of the levels but we’re confident that demand can be accommodated on the levels that will remain open.”

Level three of the car park will be resurfaced first. Levels one, two and four will also be resurfaced over the next three to five years, subject to approval.

The work is expected to start on August 18 and take around three months to complete.