Car parking has returned to Castletown’s Market Square today (Thursday, October 1) with some additional changes.

The local authority believes it has taken a ‘pragmatic approach’ to the closure of the area to the vehicles this year, which included covering the Easter Bank Holiday weekend and introducing more activities.

Chair of Castletown Town Commissioners Tony Brown commented: ‘The closure has been great. What we've endeavoured to do as we've moved on through this year is actually what I think most people wanted, which was not only to close off the square, but use it to provide a nice, pleasant place to come to, with entertainment and enjoyment for people.

‘I think we've achieved a lot of that this year, and hopefully we can build on it again next year.’

Mr Brown added that parking will be increased to one hour from 30 minutes – which he says will have a ‘big impact’ on businesses in the town.

‘We know that this had a big impact last year when we reopened the square for parking, because the shops and cafes were telling us that their takings went up, some quite dramatically because people found the convenience of parking in the square to be very important,’ he said.

‘We listened to what people said, and gone through quite a process to do that, so now we think what we've got works well.’

Mr Brown added that changes to coach parking has attracted more tourists and cruise excursions which he hopes will increase investment in Castletown.

‘We moved the police parking bays over to the Queen Street car park so there was extra coach space, which has worked well,’ he said.

‘You can see the difference because sometimes we've had four coaches and two double-decker buses from the cruise ships. There's hundreds of people in the town and they're wandering around using the facilities and buying things.’